“Thieves!” said he, “not in our sense.  And yet a fortnight ago this sylvan retreat was the scene of murder and sudden death.”

“Yes, Indians,” said the woman; “but they are beaten off and forgotten.  Troubles do not last here.  Did you see the boy?  He’s in there, in the corner, getting well of a fearful hacking.  Mrs. McChesney says he saved her and her brats.”

“Ay, McChesney told me,” said the man.  “Let’s have a peep at him.”

In they came, and I looked on the woman, and would have leaped from my bed had the strength been in me.  Superb she was, though her close-fitting travelling gown of green cloth was frayed and torn by the briers, and the beauty of her face enhanced by the marks of I know not what trials and emotions.  Little, dark-pencilled lines under the eyes were nigh robbing these of the haughtiness I had once seen and hated.  Set high on her hair was a curving, green hat with a feather, ill-suited to the wilderness.

I looked on the man.  He was as ill-equipped as she.  A London tailor must have cut his suit of gray.  A single band of linen, soiled by the journey, was wound about his throat, and I remember oddly the buttons stuck on his knees and cuffs, and these silk-embroidered in a criss-cross pattern of lighter gray.  Some had been torn off.  As for his face, ’twas as handsome as ever, for dissipation sat well upon it.

My thoughts flew back to that day long gone when a friendless boy rode up a long drive to a pillared mansion.  I saw again the picture.  The horse with the craning neck, the liveried servant at the bridle, the listless young gentleman with the shiny boots reclining on the horse-block, and above him, under the portico, the grand lady whose laugh had made me sad.  And I remembered, too, the wild, neglected lad who had been to me as a brother, warm-hearted and generous, who had shared what he had with a foundling, who had wept with me in my first great sorrow.  Where was he?

For I was face to face once more with Mrs. Temple and Mr. Harry Riddle!

The lady started as she gazed at me, and her tired eyes widened.  She clutched Mr. Riddle’s arm.

“Harry!” she cried, “Harry, he puts me in mind of—­of some one—­I cannot think.”

Mr. Riddle laughed nervously.

“There, there, Sally,” says he, “all brats resemble somebody.  I have heard you say so a dozen times.”

She turned upon him an appealing glance.

“Oh!” she said, with a little catch of her breath, “is there no such thing as oblivion?  Is there a place in the world that is not haunted?  I am cursed with memory.”

“Or the lack of it,” answered Mr. Riddle, pulling out a silver snuff-box from his pocket and staring at it ruefully.  “Damme, the snuff I fetched from Paris is gone, all but a pinch.  Here is a real tragedy.”

“It was the same in Rome,” the lady continued, unheeding, “when we met the Izards, and at Venice that nasty Colonel Tarleton saw us at the opera.  In London we must needs run into the Manners from Maryland.  In Paris—­”