e thus; then I
walked on with my eyes upon him.

At once he addressed himself to motion, not speaking or making any sign
or lessening the distance between us, but moving as I moved through the
light and shade, the warmth and stillness, of the forest. For a time
I kept my eyes upon him, but soon I was back with my dreams again. It
seemed not worth while to wonder why he walked with me, who was now the
mortal foe of the people to whom he had returned.

From the river bank, the sycamore, and the boat that I had fastened
there, I had gone northward toward the Pamunkey; from the clearing and
the ruined cabin with the dead within it, I had turned to the eastward.
Now, in that hopeless wandering, I would have faced the north again. But
the Indian who had made himself my traveling companion stopped short,
and pointed to the east. I looked at him, and thought that he knew,
maybe, of some war party between us and the Pamunkey, and would save
me from it. A listlessness had come upon me, and I obeyed the pointing
finger.

So, estranged and silent, with two spears' length of earth between us,
we went on until we came to a quiet stream flowing between low, dark
banks. Again I would have turned to the northward, but the son of
Powhatan, gliding before me, set his face down the stream, toward the
river I had left. A minute in which I tried to think and could not,
because in my ears was the singing of the birds at Weyanoke; then I
followed him.

How long I walked in a dream, hand in hand with the sweetness of the
past, I do not know; but when the present and its anguish weighed
again upon my heart it was darker, colder, stiller, in the forest. The
soundless stream was bright no longer; the golden sunshine that had lain
upon the earth was all gathered up; the earth was dark and smooth and
bare, with not a flower; the tree trunks were many and straight and
tall. Above were no longer brown branch and blue sky, but a deep and
sombre green, thick woven, keeping out the sunlight like a pall. I stood
still and gazed around me, and knew the place.

To me, whose heart was haunted, the dismal wood, the charmed silence,
the withdrawal of the light, were less than nothing. All day I had
looked for one sight of horror; yea, had longed to come at last upon it,
to fall beside it, to embrace it with my arms. There, there, though it
should be some fair and sunny spot, there would be my haunted wood. As
for this place of gloom and stillness, it fel