Leaving the fields, he rode down to a stream, crossed it, and saw the shape against a pale space of evening sky.  “Is it to be always thus?” he thought.  “I would that I had never been born.”

CHAPTER XXXVI

IN PURSUIT

January passed and February passed.  Fairfax Cary, riding for the third time since the New Year from Malplaquet toward Greenwood, marked the blue March sky, the pale brown catkins by the brooks, and the white flowers of the bloodroot piercing the far-spread carpet of dead leaves.  He rode rapidly, but he paused at Forrest’s forge and at the mill below the ford.  This also he had done before.  Neither the smith nor the men at the mill knew the idea that brought him there, but they may have thought—­if they thought at all—­that he put strange questions.  It was, moreover, matter of regret to them, and of much comment when he had passed, that Mr. Fairfax Cary had lost an old and well-liked way of making a man laugh whether he would or no.  He didn’t jest any more, he didn’t smile and flash out something at them fit to make them hold their sides.  He had aged ten years since September, he had the high look of the Carys, but he was even quieter than his brother had been—­all the sparkle and play dashed out as by a violent hand.  The smith and the men at the mill thought it a great pity, shook their heads as they looked after him, then fell again to work, or to mere happy lounging in the first spring airs.

The lonely horseman crossed the ford below the mill, drew rein beneath the guide-post, and halted there for some minutes, deep in thought.  At last, with a shake of the head and an impatient sigh, he spoke to Saladin, and once again they took the main road.  “It is the third time,” thought the rider.  “There is luck in the third time.”

The quiet highroad, wide and sunny, seemed to mock him, and the torn white clouds sailing before the March wind might have been a beaten navy, carrying with it a wreck of hope.  The gusty air brought a swirl of sere leaves across his path, and the dust rose chokingly.  “Caw! caw!” sounded the crows from a nearby field.  The dust fell, the wind passed, the road lay quiet and bright.  “Never!” said Cary between his teeth.  “I will never give up!”

Half an hour’s riding, and he came in sight of a small ordinary, its low porch flush with the road, a tall gum tree standing sentinel at the back, and on the porch steps a figure which, on nearer approach, he recognized as that of the innkeeper.  He rode up, dismounted, and fastened Saladin to the horse-rack, then walked up to and greeted a weight of drowsy flesh, centre to a cloud of tobacco smoke, and wedded for life to the squat bottle and deep glass adorning the step beside it.

“Good-morning, Mr. Cross.”

The innkeeper stirred, removed his pipe, steadied himself by a hand upon the step, and turned a dull red face upon the speaker.  “Morning, Mr.—­Mr. Cary!  Which way did you come, sir?  I never heard you.”