served me
indifferently well. You have showed small penitence for past misdeeds,
and your amendment hath been of yet lesser bulk. A hardy rogue thou wast
born, and a rogue thou wilt remain to the end of time. But we have lived
and hunted, fought and bled together, and in our own fashion I think we
bear each other good will,--even some love. I have winked at much, have
shielded you in much, perhaps. In return I have demanded one thing,
which if you had not given I would have found you another Dale to deal
with."

"Have I ever refused it, my captain?"

"Not yet. Take your hand from that pillion and hold it up; then say
after me these words: 'This lady is my mistress, my master's wife, to be
by me reverenced as such. Her face is not for my eyes nor her hand for
my lips. If I keep not myself clean of all offense toward her, may God
approve that which my master shall do!'"

The blood rushed to his face. I watched his fingers slowly loosening
their grasp.

"Tardy obedience is of the house of mutiny," I said sternly. "Will you,
sirrah, or will you not?"

He raised his hand and repeated the words.

"Now hold her as before," I ordered, and, straightening myself in the
saddle, rode on, with my eyes once more on the path before me.

A mile further on, Mistress Percy stirred and raised her head from my
shoulder. "Not at Jamestown yet?" she sighed, as yet but half awake.
"Oh, the endless trees! I dreamed I was hawking at Windsor, and then
suddenly I was here in this forest, a bird, happy because I was free;
and then a falcon came swooping down upon me,--it had me in its talons,
and I changed to myself again, and it changed to--What am I saying? I am
talking in my sleep. Who is that singing?"

In fact, from the woods in front of us, and not a bowshot away, rang out
a powerful voice:--

"'In the merry month of May,

In a morn by break of day,

With a troop of damsels playing

Forth I went, forsooth, a-maying;'" and presently, the trees thinning
in front of us, we came upon a little open glade and upon the singer. He
lay on his back, on the soft turf beneath an oak, with his hands clasped
behind his head and his eyes upturned to the blue sky showing between
leaf and branch. On one knee crossed above the other sat a squirrel with
a nut in its paws, and half a dozen others scampered here and there over
his great body, like so many frolicsome kittens. At a little distance
grazed an old horse, gray and gaunt,