remy Sparrow preached in his pulpit, slept in his
chamber, and worked in his garden. This garden ran down to the green
bank of the river; and here, sitting idly by the stream, her chin in her
hand and her dark eyes watching the strong, free sea birds as they came
and went, I found my wife one evening, as I came from the fort, where
had been some martial exercise. Thirty feet away Master Jeremy Sparrow
worked among the dying flowers, and hummed:--

"There is a garden in her face,

Where roses and white lilies grow."

He and I had agreed that when I must needs be absent he should be within
call of her; for I believed my Lord Carnal very capable of intruding
himself into her presence. That house and garden, her movements and
mine, were spied upon by his foreign hirelings, I knew perfectly well.

As I sat down upon the bank at her feet, she turned to me with a sudden
passion. "I am weary of it all!" she cried. "I am tired of being pent up
in this house and garden, and of the watch you keep upon me. And if I go
abroad, it is worse! I hate all those shameless faces that stare at me
as if I were in the pillory. I am pilloried before you all, and I find
the experience sufficiently bitter. And when I think that that man whom
I hate, hate, hate, breathes the air that I breathe, it stifles me! If I
could fly away like those birds, if I could only be gone from this place
for even a day!"

"I would beg leave to take you home, to Weyanoke," I said after a pause,
"but I cannot go and leave the field to him."

"And I cannot go," she answered. "I must watch for that ship and that
King's command that my Lord Carnal thinks potent enough to make me his
wife. King's commands are strong, but a woman's will is stronger. At
the last I shall know what to do. But now why may I not take Angela and
cross that strip of sand and go into the woods on the other side? They
are so fair and strange,--all red and yellow,--and they look very still
and peaceful. I could walk in them, or lie down under the trees and
forget awhile, and they are not at all far away." She looked at me
eagerly.

"You could not go alone," I told her. "There would be danger in that.
But to-morrow, if you choose, I and Master Sparrow and Diccon will take
you there. A day in the woods is pleasant enough, and will do none of
us harm. Then you may wander as you please, fill your arms with colored
leaves, and forget the world. We will watch that no harm comes nigh you,