And still he looked, searching her in turn from head to foot, for he was no more strange to her than she was to him.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
It was a new way for a woman to speak to a man; he in turn was not pleased, and a gleam in his eyes showed it.
“I am the son of a king.”
She started to laugh, but grew puzzled, for she had the blood of Pocahontas herself.
“You are an Indian?”
He shook his head, scorning to explain, dropped his rifle to the hollow of his arm, and, reaching for his belt where she saw the buckhorn handle of a hunting-knife, came toward her, but she did not flinch. Drawing a letter from the belt, he handed it to her. It was so worn and soiled that she took it daintily and saw on it her father’s name. The boy waved his hand toward the house far up the path.
“He live here?”
“You wish to see him?”
The boy grunted assent, and with a shock of resentment the little lady started up the path with her head very high indeed. The boy slipped noiselessly after her, his face unmoved, but his eyes were darting right and left to the flowers, trees, and bushes, to every flitting, strange bird, the gray streak of a scampering squirrel, and what he could not see, his ears took in—the clanking chains of work-horses, the whir of a quail, the screech of a peacock, the songs of negroes from far-off fields.