So they marched away across the sunlit pasture, where blackbirds walked among the cattle, and the dew sparkled in tinted drops of fire.

In all my horror of the man I pitied him, for I knew he was going to his death, there through the fresh, sweet morning, under the blue heavens.  Once I saw him look up, as though to take a last long look at a free sky, and my heart ached heavily.  Yet he had plotted death in its most dreadful shapes for others who loved life as well as he—­death to neighbors, death to strangers—­whole families, whom he had perhaps never even seen—­to mothers, to fathers, old, young, babes in the cradle, babes at the breast; and he had set down the total of one hundred and twenty-nine scalps at twenty dollars each, over his own signature.

Schuyler had said to me that it was not the black-eyed Indians the people of Tryon County dreaded, but the blue-eyed savages.  And I had scarcely understood at that time how the ferocity of demons could lie dormant in white breasts.

Standing there with Mount under the oak, I saw Sir George and Magdalen Brant leave the house and stroll down the path towards the stream.  Sir George was still speaking in his quiet, earnest manner; her eyes were fixed on him so that she scarce heeded her steps, and twice long sprays of sweetbrier caught her gown, and Sir George freed her.  But her eyes never wandered from him; and I myself thought he never looked so handsome and courtly as he did now, in his officer’s uniform and black cockade.

Where their pathway entered the alders, below the lane, they vanished from our sight; and, leaving Mount to watch I went back to the house, to search it thoroughly from cellar to the dark garret beneath the eaves.

At two o’clock in the afternoon Sir George and Magdalen Brant had not returned.  I called Mount into the house, and we cooked some eggs and johnny-cake to stay our stomachs.  An hour later I sent Mount out to make a circle of a mile, strike the Iroquois trail and hang to it till dark, following any traveller, white or red, who might be likely to lead him towards the secret trysting-place of the False-Faces.

Left alone at the house, I continued to rummage, finding nothing of importance, however; and towards dusk I came out to see if I might discover Sir George and Magdalen Brant.  They were not in sight.  I waited for a while, strolling about the deserted garden, where a few poppies turned their crimson disks towards the setting sun, and a peony lay dead and smelling rank, with the ants crawling all over it.  In the mellow light the stillness was absolute, save when a distant white-throat’s silvery call, long drawn out, floated from the forest’s darkening edge.