re a moment, then swept away into the heart of the
gathering storm. She was liker such an one. Such birds were caught at
times, but never tamed and never kept.

The lightning, which had played incessantly in pale flashes across the
low clouds in the south, now leaped to higher peaks and became more
vivid, and the muttering of the thunder changed to long, booming peals.
Thirteen years before, the Virginia storms had struck us with terror.
Compared with those of the Old World we had left, they were as cannon to
the whistling of arrows, as breakers on an iron coast to the dull wash
of level seas. Now they were nothing to me, but as the peals changed to
great crashes as of falling cities, I marveled to see my wife sleeping
so quietly. The rain began to fall, slowly, in large sullen drops, and I
rose to cover her with my cloak. Then I saw that the sleep was feigned,
for she was gazing at the storm with wide eyes, though with no fear in
their dark depths. When I moved they closed, and when I reached her the
lashes still swept her cheeks, and she breathed evenly through parted
lips. But, against her will, she shrank from my touch as I put the cloak
about her; and when I had returned to my seat, I bent to one side and
saw, as I had expected to see, that her eyes were wide open again. If
she had been one whit less beautiful, I would have wished her back at
Jamestown, back on the Atlantic, back at whatever outlandish place,
where manners were unknown, that had owned her and cast her out. Pride
and temper! I set my lips, and vowed that she should find her match.

The storm did not last. Ere we had reached Piersey's the rain had ceased
and the clouds were breaking; above Chaplain's Choice hung a great
rainbow; we passed Tants Weyanoke in the glory of the sunset, all
shattered gold and crimson. Not a word had been spoken. I sat in a humor
grim enough, and she lay there before me, wide awake, staring at the
shifting banks and running water, and thinking that I thought she slept.

At last my own wharf rose before me through the gathering dusk, and
beyond it shone out a light; for I had told Diccon to set my house in
order, and to provide fire and torches, that my wife might see I wished
to do her honor. I looked at that wife, and of a sudden the anger in my
heart melted away. It was a wilderness vast and dreadful to which she
had come. The mighty stream, the towering forests, the black skies and
deafening thunder, the wild cries of b