ou," growled my lord. "I thought I had
lost you and her and myself. This d-d red forest and this blue haze are
enough to"--He broke off with an oath.

"I came as fast as I could," said the other. His voice was strange, thin
and dreamy, matching his filmy eyes and his eternal, very faint smile.
"Your poor physician congratulates your lordship upon the success that
still attends you. Yours is a fortunate star, my lord."

"Then you have her safe?" cried my lord.

"Three miles from here, on the river bank, is a ring of pines, in which
the trees grow so thick that it is always twilight. Ten years ago a man
was murdered there, and Sir Thomas Dale chained the murderer to the tree
beneath which his victim was buried, and left him to perish of hunger
and thirst. That is the tale they tell at Jamestown. The wood is said
to be haunted by murdered and murderer, and no one enters it or comes
nearer to it than he can avoid: which makes it an excellent resort for
those whom the dead cannot scare. The lady is there, my lord, with your
four knaves to guard her. They do not know that the gloom and quiet of
the place are due to more than nature."

My lord began to laugh. Either he had been drinking, or the success of
his villainy had served for wine. "You are a man in a thousand, Nicolo!"
he said. "How far above or below the ship is this fortunate wood?"

"Just opposite, my lord."

"Can a boat land easily?"

"A creek runs through the wood to the river. There needs but the
appointed signal from the bank, and a boat from the Santa Teresa can be
rowed up the stream to the very tree beneath which the lady sits."

My lord's laughter rang out again. "You're a man in ten thousand,
Nicolo! Nicolo, the bridegroom's in town."

"Back so soon?" said the Italian. "Then we must change your lordship's
plan. With him on the ground, you can no longer wait until nightfall to
row downstream to the lady and the Santa Teresa. He'll come to look for
her."

"Ay he'll come to look for her, curse him!" echoed my lord.

"Do you think the dead will scare him?" continued the Italian.

"No, I don't!" answered my lord, with an oath. "I would he were among
them! An I could have killed him before I went"--

"I had devised a way to do it long ago, had not your lordship's
conscience been so tender. And yet, before now, our enemies--yours and
mine, my lord--have met with sudden and mysterious death. Men stared,
but they ended by calling it a dispensation of