"The dogs yonder will need Iroquois eyes to spy out this trail," he said with grim satisfaction, as they came up to him. "Let my brother and the Gold Hair rest by the fire, and Monakatocka will go into the forest and get them something to eat."
He was gone, his gigantic figure looking larger than life as he moved through the mist which still filled the hollow between the hills, and Landless and Patricia sat themselves down beside the fire. Landless piled upon it the dead wood with which the ground was strewn, and the flames leaped and crackled, sending up thin blue smoke against the hillside and reddening the bosom of the placid stream. When he had finished his task and taken his seat, there fell a silence and constraint upon the man and woman, brought through so many strange and wayward paths, through lives so widely differing, to this companionship in the heart of a waste and savage world. They sat opposite each other in the ruddy light of the fire, and each, looking into the dark or glowing hollows, saw there the same thing—the tobacco house and what had there passed.
"I wish to believe in you," said Patricia at last, lifting appealing eyes to the opposite face. "But how can I? You lied to me!"
Landless raised his head proudly. "Madam, will you listen to me—to my defense if you will? You are a Royalist: I am a Commonwealth man. Can you not see, that as ten years ago, in the estimation of you and yours, it was all that was just and heroic for a Cavalier to plot the downfall of the Government which then was, both here and at home, so they of the Commonwealth saw no disgrace in laboring for their cause, a cause as real and as high and as holy to them, madam, as was that of the Stuart and the Church to the Cavalier.... And will not the slave fight for his liberty? Is it of choice, do you think, that men lie rotting in prison, in the noisome holds of ships, are bought and sold like oxen, are chained to the oar, to the tobacco field, are herded with the refuse of the earth, are obedient to the finger, to the whip? We—they who are known as Oliverians, and they who are felons, and I who am, if you choose, of both parties, were haled here with ropes. What allegiance did we owe to them who had cast us out, or to them who bought us as they buy dumb beasts? As God lives, none! We were no longer regarded as men, we were chattels, animals, slaves, caged, and chained. And as the caged beast will break his bars if he can, so we strove to break ours. You have been a captive, madam. Is not freedom sweet to you? We also longed for it. We staked our lives upon the throw—and lost. That dream is over,—let it go!... There is honor among rebels, madam, as among thieves. That morning after the storm, I had the choice of lying to you or of becoming a traitor indeed.... But as to what I had before asked you to believe, that was the truth, is the truth. I know that in your eyes I am still the rebel to the King, well deserving the doom which awaits me, but if, after what I say to you, by the faith of a gentleman, before the God who is above the stillness of these hills, you still believe me criminal in aught else, you wrong me much, you wrong yourself!"
He ceased abruptly, and rising, began to heap more wood upon the fire. The figure of the Indian, with something dark upon its shoulder, emerged from the spectral forest, and came towards them through the mist.
"Monakatocka has found our breakfast," said Landless, forcing himself to speak with indifference, and without looking at his companion. "I am glad of it, for you must be faint from hunger."
"I am very thirsty," she said in a low voice.
"If you will come to the water's edge, that at least can be quickly remedied."
She rose from the rock upon which she had been seated and followed him down to the brink of the little stream. "I would I had a cup of gold," he said, "and here is not even a great leaf. Will you drink from my hands, madam?"
"Yes," she said; then deliberately, after a pause, "for I well believe them to be clean hands."