Down through a fragrant birch-grown road, smelling of fern and wintergreen and sassafras, we moved, the cool tinkle of moss-choked watercourses ever in our ears, mingling with melodies of woodland birds—shy, freedom-loving birds that came not with the robins to the city. Ah, I knew these birds, being country-bred—knew them one and all—the gray hermit, holy chorister of hymn divine, the white-throat, sweetly repeating his allegiance to his motherland of Canada, the great scarlet-tufted cock that drums on the bark in stillest depths, the lonely little creeping-birds that whimper up and down the trunks of forest trees, and the black-capped chickadee that fears not man, but cities—all these I listened to, and knew and loved as guerdons of that freedom which I had so long craved, and craved in vain.
And now I had it; it was mine! I tasted it, I embraced it with wide arms, I breathed it. And far away I heard the woodland hermits singing of freedom, and of the sweetness of it, and of the mercies of the Most High.
Thrilled with happiness, I glanced at Elsin Grey where she rode a pace or so ahead of me, her fair head bent, her face composed but colorless as the lace drooping from her stock. The fatigue of a sleepless night was telling on her, though as yet the reaction of the strain had not affected me one whit.
She raised her head as I forced my horse forward to her side. "What is it, Mr. Renault?" she asked coldly.
"I'm sorry you are fatigued, Elsin——"
"I am not fatigued."
"What! after all you have done for me——"
"I have done nothing for you, Mr. Renault."
"Nothing?—when I owe you everything that——"
"You owe me nothing that I care to accept."