The color had quite faded from the west, and the stars were thickening when Landless became conscious that the overseer was standing beside him. "You are the hardest one to hold that ever I saw," said that worthy grimly, and yet with a certain appreciation of the qualities that made the man at his feet hard to hold showing in his tone, "but I fancy we've got you at last. You've gone and put yourself in bilboes."
Landless smiled. "This time you may keep me. I shall not interfere. But tell me how you come here. You were sent back to the Plantations."
"Ay," said the other, "and there was the devil to pay, I can tell you, when I had to report you missing to Sir William. But Major Carrington stood my friend, and I got off with a tongue-drubbing. Well, after about three weeks or so, during which time the dogs and the searchers brought back most all of the runaway niggers, and Mistress Lettice had hysterics every day, back comes the Colonel and Sir Charles with ten of the twenty men who had rowed them up the Pamunkey. The rest had fallen in a brush with the Monacans. They hadn't come up with the Ricahecrians, hadn't seen hair nor hide of them, had but one report from the Indian villages along the river, and that was that no Ricahecrians had passed that way. So after a while they were forced to believe that they were upon a false scent, and back they comes post haste to the Plantations to get more men, and go up the Rappahannock. Well, they went up the Rappahannock, and found nothing to their purpose, so back they came again to try the James and the country above the Falls. This time they found the Settlements, which had been before like an overturned hive, pretty quiet, the ringleaders of your precious plot having all been strung up, and the rest made as mild as sheep with branding and whipping and doubling of times. So, the tobacco being in and the plantation quiet, things were left to Haines, and I came along with the Colonel. Major Carrington, too, who they say is in the Governor's black books, though Lord knows he was active enough in stamping out this insurrection, asked to be allowed to join in the search for his old friend's daughter, and so he's down in the woods yonder. And Mr. Cary is there, and Mr. Peyton (Mistress Betty Carrington made him come) and Mr. Jaclyn Carter. Fegs! half the young gentry in the colony pressed their services on the Colonel. It got to be the fashion to volunteer to run their heads into the wolf's mouth for Mistress Patricia. But Sir Charles choked most of them off. 'Gentlemen,' he says, says he, 'despite the saying that there cannot be too much of a good thing, I beg to remind you that the disastrous fortunes of those who first struggled with the forest and the Indians in this western paradise are attributed to the fact that they were two thirds gentlemen. Wherefore let us shun the rock upon which they split'—"
"How many of my fellow conspirators were put to death?" interrupted Landless.
"All the principal ones—them that Trail denounced as leaders. The rest we pardoned after giving them a lesson they won't soon forget. We let bygones be bygones with the redemptioners and slaves—all but those devils who got away that night at Verney Manor, and with Trail at their head, made for Captain Laramore's ship which was going to turn pirate. Well, they got to the boats, and one lot got off safe to the ship which hoisted the black flag, and sailed away to the Indies, and is sailing there, murdering and ruining, to this day, I reckon. But the other boat was over full, and the steersman was drunken, and she capsized before she got to the middle of the channel. Some were drowned, and those that got ashore we hung next morning. But Trail was in the first boat."
"When do you—do we—start down the river?"
"At midnight. And it's the Colonel's orders that until then you stay here among the rocks and not show yourself to the men below. He'll see you before we start. In the mean time I'll keep you company." And the overseer took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filled the former, lighted it, and leaning back against the rock fell to smoking in contented silence.
Landless too sat in silence, with his head thrown back against the rock and his face uplifted to the growing splendor of the skies. The night wind, blowing mournfully around the bare hill and the broken crag, struck upon his brow with a hint of winter in its touch. With it came the tide of forest sounds—the sough of the leaves, the dull creaking of branch against branch, the wash of the water in the reeds, the whirr of wings, the cries of night birds—all the low and stealthy notes of the earth chant which had become to him as old and tenderly familiar as the lullabies of his childhood. Below him, at the foot of the hill, a square of dark and stately pines was irradiated by a great fire which burnt redly, casting flickering shadows far across the smooth brown earth, and around which sat or moved many figures. Laughter and jest, oaths and scraps of song floated up to the lonely watcher upon the hilltop. He heeded them not—he was above that world—and no sound came from that other and smaller fire blazing at some distance from the first—and the tree trunks between were so many and so thick that he could see naught but the light.