CHAPTER XXXVII
VALE
The overseer knocked the ashes from his pipe and stuck it in his belt. "The master," he said curtly, getting to his feet as three cloaked figures, followed by a negro bearing a torch, came up the hillside and into the waste of stones beneath the crags. Advancing to meet them, he took the torch from Regulus's hand and fired a mass of dead and leafless vine depending from the cliff. In the bright light which sprang up, filling the rocky chamber and burnishing the face of the crags into the semblance of a cataract of fire, the parties to the interview gazed at one another in silence.
Colonel Verney was the first to speak. "I am sorry to see that you are wounded," he said gravely.
"I thank you, sir,—it is nothing."
The Colonel walked the length of the plateau twice, then came back to his prisoner's side. "My daughter has told me all," he said somewhat huskily. "That you and the Susquehannock sought for her and found her; that you fought for her bravely more than once; that after the Indian was slain you guided and protected her through the forest; that you have in all things borne yourself towards her faithfully and reverently, not injuring her by word, thought or deed. My daughter is very dear to me—dearer than life, I am not ungrateful. I thank you very heartily."
"Mistress Patricia Verney is dear to me also," said Sir Charles, coming forward to stand beside his kinsman. "I too thank the man who restores her to her friends—to her lover."
"And I would to God," said the third figure, advancing, "that we could save the brave man to whom so much is owed. If I were Governor of Virginia—"
"You could do naught, Carrington," broke in the Colonel impatiently. "The man is convict—outside the pale! A convict, and the head of an Oliverian plot! Scarce the King himself could pardon him! And if he did, how long d' ye think the walls of the gaol at Jamestown would keep him from the rabble—and the nearest tree? No, no, William Berkeley does but his duty. And yet—and yet—"
He began to pace the rocks again, frowning heavily, and pulling at the curls of his periwig. "You are a brave man," he said at last, stopping before Landless and speaking with energy, "and from my soul I wish I could save you. I would gladly overlook all that is over and done with, would gladly free you, aid you, help you, so far as might be, to retrieve your past—but I cannot. My hands are tied; it is impossible—you must see for yourself that it is impossible."