Cardigan

"Jack," I said, "is poor Cade cured o' fancy and his mad imaginings?"

"Ay, lad, for the time."

"For the time?"

"A year, two years, three, perhaps. This is not the first mad flight o' fancy Cade has taken on his aged wings."

"You never told me that," I said, sharply.

"No, lad."

"Why not?"

"Do you spread abroad the sorry secrets of your kin, Mr. Cardigan?"

"He is not your kin!"

"He is more," said Mount, simply.

After a silence I asked him on what previous occasion the little Weasel had gone moon-mad.

"On many – every third or fourth year since I first knew him," said Mount, soberly. "But never before did he leave me to follow his poor mad phantoms – always the phantom of his wife, lad, in divers guises. He saw her in a silvery bush o' moonlight nights, and talked with her till my goose-flesh rose and crawled on me; he saw her mirrored in cold, deep pools at dawn, looking up at him from the golden-ribbed sands, and I have laid in the canoe to watch the trouts' quick shadows moving on the bottom, and he a-talking sweet to his dear wife as though she hid under the lily-pads like a blossom."

He glanced up at me pitifully as he walked beside my stirrup; I laid my hand on his leather-tufted shoulder.

"Sir, it is sad," he muttered; "a fair mind nobly wrecked. But grief cannot deform the soul, Mr. Cardigan."

"He knows you now?"

"Ay, and knows that he has dwelt for months in madness."

"Does he know that it was me he loved so deeply in his madness?" asked Silver Heels, gently.

"I think he does," whispered Mount.

Silver Heels turned her sorrowful eyes on poor Cade Renard.

Riding that afternoon near sunset, at the False Faces' Carrying-Place upon the Mohawk, we spoke of Johnson Hall and the old life, sadly, for never again could we hope to enter its beloved portals.

Naught that belonged to us remained in the Hall, save only the memories none might rob us of.

"If only I might have Betty," said Silver Heels, wistfully.

"Betty? Did she not attend you to Boston with Sir John?" I asked.

"Yes, but she was slave to Sir John. I could not buy her; you know how poor I awoke to find myself in Boston town."

"Would not that brute allow you Betty?" I asked, angrily.

"No; I think he feared her. Poor, blubbering Betty, how she wept and roared her grief when Sir John bade her pack up, and called her 'hussy.'"

That night we lay at Schenectady, where also was camped a body of Sir William's Mohawks, a sullen, watchful band, daubed in hunting-paint, yet their quivers hung heavy with triple-feathered war-arrows, and their knives and hatchets and their rifles were over-bright and clean to please me.

Some of them knew me, and came to talk with me over a birch-fire. I gave them tobacco, and we tarried by the birch-fire till the stars waned in the sky and the dawn-stillness fell on land and river; but from them I could learn nothing, save that Sir John and Colonel Guy had vowed to scalp their own neighbours should they as much as cry, "God save our country!" Evil news, truly, yet only set me firmer in my design to battle till the end for the freedom that God had given and kings would take away.

Silver Heels, quitting the inn with Mount, came to warn me that I must sleep if we set out at sunrise. Graciously she greeted the Mohawks who had risen to withdraw; they all knew her, and watched her like tame panthers with red coals in their eyes.

"But they are panthers yet; forget it not," muttered Jack Mount.

At sunrise we rode out into the blue hills. Homeless, yet nearing home at last, my heart lifted like a singing bird. Dew on the sweet-fern exhaling, dew on the ghost-flower, dew on the scented brake! – and the whistle of feathered wings, and the endless ringing chorus of the birds of Tryon! Hills of pure sapphire, streams of gems, limpid necklaces festooned to drip diamonds from crags into some frothing pool! Pendent pearls on vines starred white with bloom; a dun deer at gaze, knee-deep in feathering willow-grass; a hermit-bird his morning hymn, cloistered in the vaulted monastery where the great organ stirs among the pines!

Hills! Hills of Tryon, unploughed, unharrowed, save by the galloping deer; hills, sweet islands in the dark pine ocean, over whose waste the wild hawk's mewing answers the cry of its high-wheeling mate; hills of the morning, aromatic with spiced fern, and perfumed of the gum of spruce and balsam; hills of Tryon; my hills! my hills!

"The spring is with us," said Jack Mount, stooping to pluck a frail flower.

"Ka-nah-wah-hawks, the cowslip!" murmured Silver Heels.

"Savour the wind; what is it?" I asked, sniffing.

"O-neh-tah, the pine!" she cried.

"O-ne-tah, the spruce!" I corrected.

"The pine, silly!"

"The spruce!"

"No, no, the pine!"

"So be it, sweet."

"No, I am wrong!"

And we laughed, and she stretched out her slender hand to me from her saddle.

Then we galloped forward together, calling out greeting to our old friends as we passed; and thus we saluted Jis-kah-kah, the robin, and Kivi-yeh, the little owl, and we whistled at Koo-koo-e, the quail, and mocked at old Kah-kah, the watchful crow.

Han-nah-wen, the butterfly, came flitting along the roadside, ragged with his long winter's sleep.

"He should not have slept in his velvet robe for a night-shift," said Silver Heels; "he is a summer spendthrift, and Nah-wan-hon-tah, the speckled trout, lies watching him under the water."

Which set me thinking of my feather-flies; and then the dear old river flashed in sight.

"I see – I see – there, very far away on that hill – " whispered Silver Heels.

"I see," I muttered, choking.

Presently the sunlight glimmered on a window of the distant Hall.