"That cannot be," was the gentle reply. "If friendship and love are immortal, God will not make a torture of his holiest gifts. In the next world as in this I shall surely be your friend."
"And the friendship of angels must be sweeter than earthly love," answered the youth. "That shall content me, lady; something tells me that it will not be long before I can claim this beautiful promise, up yonder. The path that I have chosen is full of danger, and its end may be speedy death."
Barbara looked down upon him with all the light of a noble soul in her eyes.
"Oh, Philip! may you never learn how sweet the hopes of death can be to a human soul."
The young man smiled mournfully.
"Perhaps I have already learned that," he said. "But I am wrong, inhospitable, selfish; my complaints trouble you, and you cannot eat. Come, come; let me carve another bird, this is cold."
An hour after this Barbara mounted her horse, and accompanied by her old guide took the forest path again. As the night came on, and the shadows around her grew blacker and blacker, though the tree tops were aflame with scarlet and gold, she became conscious of some strange companionship in the woods. Sometimes it seemed as if the mellow tread of hoofs stole up from the recesses of the forest. Then she could hear the bend and sway of branches; and, closer still, whispering sounds among the leaves, as if every thing around her were full of active life. What these signs could be was a wonder to her; neither restless birds nor deer, bounding through the undergrowth in flocks, could produce a noise at once so subdued and persistent. But no harm came, or appeared to threaten her. On the contrary, legions of spirits seemed to guard her path unseen. It was dark before Barbara came out of the thick of the forest, and made her way to the farm-house. Up to the very margin of the trees these whispered sounds and almost inaudible footsteps accompanied her. The moment Barbara's feet crossed that threshold hundreds on hundreds of human beings swarmed out of the woods, and moved noiselessly toward Jason Brown's barn.
A crash, as of broken boards, followed by a low, rattling sound, came from the building. Then, as each man filed by the door, a musket was placed in his hand, which he carried straight to the woods, following the warrior who had gone before, as savages tread a war-path. It was the end of this procession that Jason Brown had seen, coiling like a serpent along the edge of the forest, after Barbara Stafford came forth into the moonlight on her white horse and rode away. Of all the arms secreted in the barn, not a gun was left; even the boxes were carried off in fragments.