“Me go, missy,” said Ucatella zealously, pleased with an excuse for stretching her magnificent limbs.

“Ay, but mayhap he will not come back with you:  will he, Dick?”

“That he will, like a lamb.”  Dick wanted to look after the cattle.

“Yuke, my girl,” said Phoebe, “listen.  He has been a good friend of ours in trouble; and now he is not quite right here.  So be very kind to him, but be sure and bring him back, or keep him till we come.”

“Me bring him back alive, certain sure,” said Ucatella, smiling from ear to ear.  She started with a sudden glide, like a boat taking the water, and appeared almost to saunter away, so easy was the motion; but when you looked at the ground she was covering, the stride, or glide, or whatever it was, was amazing.

“She seem’d in walking to devour the way.”

Christopher walked fast, but nothing like this; and as he stopped at times to botanize and gaze at the violet hills, and interrogate the past, she came up with him about five miles from the halting-place.

She laid her hand quietly on his shoulder, and said, with a broad genial smile, and a musical chuckle, “Ucatella come for you.  Missy want to speak you.”

“Oh! very well;” and he turned back with her, directly; but she took him by the hand to make sure; and they marched back peaceably, in silence, and hand in hand.  But he looked and looked at her, and at last he stopped dead short, and said, a little arrogantly, “Come, I know you.  You are not locked up;” and he inspected her point-blank.  She stood like an antique statue, and faced the examination.  “You are ’the noble savage,’” said he, having concluded his inspection.

“Nay,” said she.  “I be the housemaid.”

“The housemaid?”

“Iss, the housemaid, Ucatella.  So come on.”  And she drew him along, sore perplexed.

They met the cavalcade a mile from the halting-place, and Phoebe apologized a little to Christopher.  “I hope you’ll excuse me, sir,” said she, “but I am just for all the world like a hen with her chickens; if but one strays, I’m all in a flutter till I get him back.”

“Madam,” said Christopher, “I am very unhappy at the way things are locked up.  Please tell me truly, is this ‘the housemaid,’ or ’the noble savage’?”

“Well, she is both, if you go to that, and the best creature ever breathed.”

“Then she is ’the noble savage’?”

“Ay, so they call her, because she is black.”

“Then, thank Heaven,” said Christopher, “the past is not all locked up.”

That afternoon they stopped at an inn.  But Dick slept in the cart.  At three in the morning they took the road again, and creaked along supernaturally loud under a purple firmament studded with huge stars, all bright as moons, that lit the way quite clear, and showed black things innumerable flitting to and fro; these made Phoebe shudder, but were no doubt harmless; still Dick carried his double rifle, and a revolver in his belt.