"Are you a runner from Johnstown?" she asked, sharply.
I stood still. The lady was Silver Heels. She did not know me.
She did not know me, nor I her, at first. It was only when she spoke. And this change had come to us both within four weeks' time!
That she did not recognize me was less to be wondered at. The dark mask of the sun, which I now wore, had changed me to an Indian; anxiety, fatigue, and my awful peril in the Cayuga camp had made haggard a youthful face, perhaps scored and hollowed it. In these weeks I had grown tall; I knew it, for my clothes no longer fitted in leg or sleeve. And I was thin as a kestrel, too; my added belt holes told me that.
But that I had not recognized her till she spoke distressed me. She, too, had grown tall; her face and body were shockingly frail; she had painted her cheeks and powdered her hair, and by her laces and frills and her petticoat of dentelle, she might have been a French noblewoman from Quebec. It were idle to deny her beauty, but it was the beauty of death itself.
"Silver Heels," I said.
Her hand flew to her bosom, then crept up on her throat, which I saw throbbing and whitening at every breath. Good cause for fear had she, the graceless witch!
After a moment she turned and walked into the orchard. 'Deed I scared her, too, for her dragging feet told of the shock I had given her, and her silk kirtle trembled to her knees. She leaned on the wall, looking out over the town as I had first seen her, and I followed her and rested against the wall beside her.
"Silver Heels," I asked, "are you afraid to see me?"
"No," she said, but the tears in her throat stopped her. Lord! how I had frightened her withal!