Five minutes later the door was flung open and the four men took the road. Neville in the lead with the tall stranger, Philpotts and the other following close behind. In his zeal to keep up with the great strides of Philpotts, the smaller man tripped over his sword and well-nigh fell down the steep pine-needle carpeted path slippery with hoar frost. The larger man looked back annoyed. Neville smiled at his discomfiture.
"Faith, Brent despatched a boy to do a man's work. Were't not for Philpotts I could, an it pleased me, make short work of you and yonder stripling."
"Ay, but it is for Philpotts; moreover, yonder stripling is marvellous handy aboard the boat, as you will see when we shake out the sails."
Neville spoke no more, but tramped along, looking well to his footsteps, for he too found the ground wet and slippery with its thin glazing of ice. The treacherous Southern winter was in one of its relenting moods, and the morning air, even now before the sun was fully risen, held a hint of spring. The green pines sent forth their sweet odor, and a bird fluttered up and flapped his bright wings full in Neville's face.
It was a morning to give a man courage for meeting life or for leaving it. Neville had faced danger and death too often to be wholly absorbed in his own fate, and now interwoven with his dull web of despair was a bright thread of enjoyment of the scene around him.
Never will any romancer truly tell the story of a man's inner life till he takes cognizance of the many trains of thought, gay and sombre, that can slide on side by side, neither wholly filling nor dominating the mind.
The tingling air, the slant sunshine, and the sense of unknown adventure awaiting him raised Neville's spirits, so that as a turn of the path brought the ketch in sight he found himself humming the refrain of a song,—a song he had first heard rippling from the lips of Elinor Calvert, oh, how many years ago, among the green fields of Somerset,—
"Greensleeves was all my joy,
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,