The wind blew from the west, from the unknown. I turned my head, and
it beat against my forehead, cold and fragrant with the essence of the
forest,--pine and cedar, dead leaves and black mould, fen and hollow
and hill,--all the world of woods over which it had passed. The ghost
of things long dead, which face or voice could never conjure up, will
sometimes start across our path at the beckoning of an odor. A day in
the Starving Time came back to me: how I had dragged myself from our
broken palisade and crazy huts, and the groans of the famished and the
plague-stricken, and the presence of the unburied dead, across the neck
and into the woods, and had lain down there to die, being taken with a
sick fear and horror of the place of cannibals behind me; and how weak
I was!--too weak to care any more. I had been a strong man, and it had
come to that, and I was content to let it be. The smell of the woods
that day, the chill brown earth beneath me, the blowing wind, the long
stretch of the river gleaming between the pines,... and fair in sight
the white sails of the Patience and the Deliverance.

I had been too nigh gone then to greatly care that I was saved; now I
cared, and thanked God for my life. Come what might in the future, the
past was mine. Though I should never see my wife again, I had that hour
in the state cabin of the George. I loved, and was loved again.

There was a noise outside the door, and Rolfe's voice speaking to the
gaoler. Impatient for his entrance I started toward the door, but when
it opened he made no move to cross the threshold. "I am not coming in,"
he said, with a face that he strove to keep grave. "I only came to bring
some one else." With that he stepped back, and a second figure, coming
forward out of the dimness behind him, crossed the threshold. It was a
woman, cloaked and hooded. The door was drawn to behind her, and we were
alone together.

Beside the cloak and hood she wore a riding mask. "Do you know who it
is?" she asked, when she had stood, so shrouded, for a long minute,
during which I had found no words with which to welcome her.

"Yea," I answered: "the princess in the fairy tale."

She freed her dark hair from its covering, and unclasping her cloak let
it drop to the floor. "Shall I unmask?" she asked, with a sigh. "Faith!
I should keep the bit of silk between your eyes, sir, and my blushes. Am
I ever to be the forward one? Do you not think me too bold a lady?" As
she spoke,