expanse of the river, the ship—­his ship, the Golden Rose—­that was to take him home to England,—­he forgot the night and the forest, and saw these things quite plainly.  Then he fell to thinking of London and the sweets that he meant to taste, the heady wine of youth and life that he meant to drain to the lees.  He was young; he could spare the years.  One day he would come back to Virginia, to the dim old garden and quiet house.  His factor would give account, and he would settle down in the red brick house, with the tobacco to the north and east, the corn to the west, and to the south the mighty river,—­the river silvered by the moon, the river that lay just beyond him, gleaming through the trees—­

Startled by the sudden tightening of the reins, or by the tearing of some frightened thing through the canes that beset the low, miry bank, the horse sprang aside; then stood trembling with pricked ears.  The white man stared at the stream; turned in his saddle and stared at the tree trunks, the patches of moonlight, and the impenetrable shadow that closed each vista.  “The blazed trees!” he exclaimed at last.  “How long since we saw one?”

The slave shook his head.  “Juba forgot to look.  He was away by a river that he knew.”

“We have passed from out the pines,” said Haward.  “These are oaks.  But what is that water, and how far we are out of our reckoning the Lord only knows!”

As he spoke he pushed his horse through the tall reeds to the bank of the stream.  Here in the open, away from the shadow of the trees, the full moon had changed the night-time into a wonderful, silver day.  Narrow above and belows the stream widened before him into a fairy basin, rimmed with reeds, unruffled, crystal-clear, stiller than a dream.  The trees that grew upon the farther side were faint gray clouds in the moonlight, and the gold of the fireflies was very pale.  From over the water, out of the heart of the moonlit wood, came the song of a mockingbird, a tumultuous ecstasy, possessing the air and making elfin the night.

Haward backed his horse from the reeds to the oak beneath which waited the negro. “’Tis plain that we have lost our way, Juba,” he said, with a laugh.  “If you were an Indian, we should turn and straightway retrace our steps to the blazed trees.  Being what you are, you are more valuable in the tobacco fields than in the forest.  Perhaps this is the stream which flows by the cabin in the valley.  We’ll follow it down, and so arrive, at least, at a conclusion.”

They dismounted, and, leading their horses, followed the stream for some distance, to arrive at the conclusion that it was not the one beside which they had dined that day.  When they were certain of this, they turned and made their way back to the line of reeds which they had broken to mark their starting-point.  By now the moon was high, and the mockingbird in the wood across the water was singing madly.  Turning from the still, moonlit sheet, the silent reeds, the clear mimicker in the slumbrous wood, the two wayfarers plunged into the darkness beneath the spreading branches of the oak-trees.  They could not have ridden far from the pines; in a very little while they might reach and recognize the path which they should tread.