Part 5 (2/2)

The cabins nearest them were deserted, their occupants having joined themselves to the groups further down the lane where the firelight beat strongest and the torches were more numerous. With no more sound than a moth would make, flitting through the dusk, the mad woman led them to the outermost of these cabins. Within five paces of the door she stopped and pointed a long forefinger.

”The breaking heart!” she said in a triumphant whisper.

A man lay, face downwards, in the coa.r.s.e and scanty gra.s.s. One arm was bent beneath his forehead, the other was outstretched, the hand clenched. It was the att.i.tude of one who has flung himself down in dumb, despairing misery. As they looked, he gave a long gasping sob that shook his whole frame, then lay quiet.

A burst of revelry came down the lane. The man raised his head impatiently, then let it drop again upon his arm.

Patricia turned and walked quickly back the way they had come. Betty and Sir Charles followed her; Margery, her whim gratified, had vanished into the darkness of the pines.

No one spoke until they were again amidst the wet and rustling corn.

Then said Betty with tears in her voice, ”O Patricia, darling! there is so much misery in the world, fair and peaceful as it looks to-night.

That poor man!”

”That 'poor man,' Betty,” answered Patricia in a hard voice, ”is a criminal, a felon, guilty of some dreadful, sordid thing, a gaol-bird reclaimed from the gallows and sent here to pollute the air we breathe.”

”It was the convict, Landless, was it not?” asked Sir Charles.

”Yes.”

”But, Patricia,” said the gentle Betty, ”whatever he may have done, he is wretched now.”

”He has sowed the wind; let him reap the whirlwind,” said Patricia steadily.

They went on to the house and into the great room where the myrtle candles were burning softly, the dimity curtains shutting out the night.

Mrs. Lettice was at the spinet, with Captain Laramore to turn the leaves of her song book, and the Governor, with the chess table out and the pieces in battle array, awaited (he said) the arrival of the Princess of the Castle in the Air.

CHAPTER V

IN THE THREE-MILE FIELD

In a far corner of the Three-mile Field Landless bent over tobacco plant after tobacco plant, patiently removing the little green shoots or ”suckers” from the parent stem.

His back and limbs ached from the unaccustomed stooping, the fierce suns.h.i.+ne beat upon his head, the blood pounded behind his temples, his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth,--and the noontide rest was still two hours away. As, with a gasp of weariness, he straightened himself, the endless plain of green rose and fell to his dazzled eyes in misty billows. The most robust rustic required several months of seasoning before he and the Virginia climate became friends, and this man was still weak from privation and confinement in prison and in the noisome hold of the s.h.i.+p.

He turned his weary eyes from the vivid gold green of the fields to the shadows of the forest. It lay within a few yards of him, just on the other side of a little stream and a rail fence that zigzagged in gray lines hung with creepers. At the moment he defined happiness as a plunge into the cool, perfumed darkness, a luxurious flinging of a tired body upon the carpet of pine needles, a shutting out, forever, of the suns.h.i.+ne.

Suddenly he felt that eyes were upon him, and his glance traveled from the fringe of trees to meet that of an Indian seated upon a log in an angle of the fence.

He was a man of gigantic stature, dressed in coa.r.s.e canvas breeches, and with a handkerchief of gaudy dye twisted about his head. His bold features wore the usual Indian expression of saturnine imperturbability, and he half sat, half reclined upon the log as motionless as a piece of carven bronze, staring at Landless with large, inscrutable eyes.

Landless, staring in return, saw something else. The rank growth of weeds in which the log was sunk moved ever so slightly. There was a flash as of a swiftly drawn rapier, and something long and mottled hung for an instant upon the shoulder of the Indian, and then dropped into its lair again.

With a sudden lithe twist of his body, the savage flung himself upon it, and holding it down with one hand, with the other beat the life out with a heavy stick. The creature was killed by the first stroke, but he continued to rain vindictive blows upon it until it was mashed to a pulp. Then, with a serenely impa.s.sive mien, he resumed his seat upon the log.

Landless sprang across the stream, and went up to him.

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