by some cavalier to his mistress of an hour.  She sang not loudly, but very sweetly; carelessly, too, and as if to herself; now and then repeating a line twice or maybe thrice; pleased with the sweet melancholy of the notes, but not thinking overmuch of the meaning of the words.  They died upon her lips when Hugon rose from a lair of reeds and called to her to stop.  “Come to the shore, ma’m’selle!” he cried.  “See, I have brought you a ribbon from the town.  Behold!” and he fluttered a crimson streamer.

Audrey caught her breath; then gazed, reassured, at the five yards of water between her and the bank.  Had Hugon stood there in his hunting dress, she would have felt them no security; but he was wearing his coat and breeches of fine cloth, his ruffled shirt, and his great black periwig.  A wetting would not be to his mind.

As she answered not, but went on her way, silent now, and with her slender figure bending with the motion of the pole, he frowned and shrugged; then took up his pilgrimage, and with his light and swinging stride kept alongside of the boat.  The ribbon lay across his arm, and he turned it in the sunshine.  “If you come not and get it,” he wheedled, “I will throw it in the water.”

The angry tears sprang to Audrey’s eyes.  “Do so, and save me the trouble,” she answered, and then was sorry that she had spoken.

The red came into the swarthy cheeks of the man upon the bank.  “You love me not,” he said.  “Good!  You have told me so before.  But here I am!”

“Then here is a coward!” said Audrey.  “I do not wish you to walk there.  I do not wish you to speak to me.  Go back!”

Hugon’s teeth began to show.  “I go not,” he answered, with something between a snarl and a smirk.  “I love you, and I follow on your path,—­like a lover.”

“Like an Indian!” cried the girl.

The arrow pierced the heel.  The face which he turned upon her was the face of a savage, made grotesque and horrible, as war-paint and feathers could not have made it, by the bushy black wig and the lace cravat.

“Audrey!” he called.  “Morning Light!  Sunshine in the Dark!  Dancing Water!  Audrey that will not be called ‘mademoiselle’ nor have the wooing of the son of a French chief!  Then shall she have the wooing of the son of a Monacan woman.  I am a hunter.  I will woo as they woo in the woods.”

Audrey bent to her pole, and made faster progress down the creek.  Her heart was hot and angry, and yet she was afraid.  All dreadful things, all things that oppressed with horror, all things that turned one white and cold, so cold and still that one could not run away, were summed up for her in the word “Indian.”  To her the eyes of Hugon were basilisk eyes,—­they drew her and held her; and when she looked into them, she saw flames rising and bodies of murdered kindred; then the mountains loomed above her again, and it was night-time, and she was alone save for the dead, and mad with fear and with the quiet.