Who but Lady Greensleeves?"
The words called up a vision of Elinor as he had seen her at eighteen tripping along the forest paths of the Somerset woods, her robe as green as Maid Marian's and her floating sleeves catching ever and anon on bush or briar,—a blessed chance which gave her lover opportunity to bend over it and touch it with his lips whilst disentangling it slowly—oh, so slowly! And again he saw her in a dress of a similar fashion there in the hall of St. Gabriel's, and again she smiled upon him, and those warm slender fingers rested in his, and those perfect eyes unveiled their tender depths before his gaze. To have come so near and then to have lost—oh, it was unbearable!—and he kicked viciously at the innocent root of a tree in his path.
As the last words left his lips, his mood sank to despair again.
"Look alive there, sir! Jump aboard, Philpotts, and loosen that forward sheet! Sir Christopher, step on that board and you'll reach the stern easy! That's your seat by the helm."
"You are shivering," said the younger man, who had scarcely spoken till now. "Take my cloak."
"No, no," reproved his elder, "not too much softness to the Governor's prisoner! He'll do very well for a while yet with his jerkin and doublet. Come on! we need your help there forward."
"Let me thank you for the intention at least before you go," said Neville, ignoring the churlish speech of the older man and addressing himself to the one in purple. "A kind word may carry more warmth than a purple cloak." Then he sank back, gazing out over the water, while the sails were raised and the ropes cast off from the wharf, which slowly receded as the bright sunrise-tinted water slipped along the keel, and the brisk little waves slapped the side of the ketch as if daring her to a game of tag.
They were out in the river now. The Potomac spread far to the southward as far as eye could reach, with vague hints of low hills so near the hue of the water that one could scarce tell where water ended and land began, or where the land again slipped into the misty blueness of the western sky.
Neville strained his eyes to catch sight of a particular point as they passed it,—a point rising a little from the water and crowned with a thick growth of primeval forest. There lay Robin Hood's Barn, and the wide acres of Cecil's Manor stretched peacefully along the river just where it widened into the bay.