"I hear a sound of footsteps over the leaves," said Patricia.
"The wind rustles in them, or the deer pass," answered Landless. "Oh, my life! are you content?"
She answered with a low, clear laugh. "I hold happiness fast," she said. "It cannot escape us now."
"They are coming," he said. "The last kiss, heart of my heart."
Their lips met, and their eyes with a smile in them met, and then he put her gently behind him, and turned to again face Luiz Sebastian.
With his eyes fixed upon the yellow face, he had raised his hand to strike at the yellow breast, spotted and barred with the black of the war paint, when an Indian, gliding between, struck up his arm, and sent the knife tinkling down upon the rocks. With a yell of triumph the savage snatched up the weapon, and brandished it, showing it to his fellows, who, seeing their work accomplished, and the two whom they had tracked so far actually in their hands, made the forest ring with their exultant shouts. A few closed in around the devoted pair, directing at them fiendish cries and no less fiendish laughter, and menacing them with knife and tomahawk, but the majority streamed down the steep and into the forest at its base.
"They go to gather wood," said the still smiling Luiz Sebastian. "By and by we are to have a bonfire. Señor Landless has often carried wood, I think, in those old times when he was a slave, and when the pretty mistress behind him there treated him as such—unless she gave him favors in secret. But, Mother of God! now that she has made him master, we must carry the wood for him!"
Landless, standing with folded arms, looked at him with quiet scorn. "It is the nature of the viper to use his venom," he said calmly. "Such a thing cannot anger me."
"At the same time it is as well to crush the viper," said a voice at his elbow.
The speaker, who was Sir Charles Carew, had come from behind the boulders which ran in a straggling line down the hillside toward the river. He had his drawn sword in his hand, and as he spoke, he ran the mulatto through the body. The wretch, his oath of rage and astonishment still upon his lips, fell to the ground without a groan, writhed there a moment or two, and then lay still forever.