pines.

No one spoke until they were again amidst the wet and rustling corn.
Then said Betty with tears in her voice, "O Patricia, darling! there is
so much misery in the world, fair and peaceful as it looks to-night.
That poor man!"

"That 'poor man,' Betty," answered Patricia in a hard voice, "is a
criminal, a felon, guilty of some dreadful, sordid thing, a gaol-bird
reclaimed from the gallows and sent here to pollute the air we breathe."

"It was the convict, Landless, was it not?" asked Sir Charles.

"Yes."

"But, Patricia," said the gentle Betty, "whatever he may have done, he
is wretched now."

"He has sowed the wind; let him reap the whirlwind," said Patricia
steadily.

They went on to the house and into the great room where the myrtle
candles were burning softly, the dimity curtains shutting out the night.
Mrs. Lettice was at the spinet, with Captain Laramore to turn the leaves
of her song book, and the Governor, with the chess table out and the
pieces in battle array, awaited (he said) the arrival of the Princess of
the Castle in the Air.

CHAPTER V

IN THE THREE-MILE FIELD

In a far corner of the Three-mile Field Landless bent over tobacco plant
after tobacco plant, patiently removing the little green shoots or
"suckers" from the parent stem.

His back and limbs ached from the unaccustomed stooping, the fierce
sunshine beat upon his head, the blood pounded behind his temples, his
tongue clave to the roof of his mouth,--and the noontide rest was still
two hours away. As, with a gasp of weariness, he straightened himself,
the endless plain of green rose and fell to his dazzled eyes in misty
billows. The most robust rustic required several months of seasoning
before he and the Virginia climate became friends, and this man was
still weak from privation and confinement in prison and in the noisome
hold of the ship.

He turned his weary eyes from the vivid gold green of the fields to the
shadows of the forest. It lay within a few yards of him, just on the
other side of a little stream and a rail fence that zigzagged in gray
lines hung with creepers. At the moment he defined happiness as a plunge
into the cool, perfumed darkness, a luxurious flinging of a tired body
upon the carpet of pine needles, a shutting out, forever, of the
sunshine.

Suddenly he felt that eyes were upon him, and his glance traveled from
the fringe of trees to meet that of an Indian seated upon a log in an
angle of t