“When I had opened my packet and had understood its contents, I made of my clothes a bundle and took the highway to ask of all the world where lay the road to the vale Yndaia, and where might be found the Regiment de la Reine.  Wherever was a camp of soldiers, there I loitered, asking the same question, day after day, month after month.  I asked of Indians—­ our Hudson guides, and the brigaded White Plains Indians.  None seemed to know—­ or if they did they made no answer.  And the soldiers did not know, and only laughed, taking me for some camp wanton——­”

Again she passed her slender hand slowly across her eyes, shaking her head.

“That I am not wholly bad amazes me at times....  I wonder if you know how hunger tampers with the will?  I mean more than mere hunger; I mean that dreadful craving never completely satisfied—­ so that the ceaseless famine gnaws and gnaws while the sick mind still sickens, brooding over what the body seems to need of meat and drink and warmth—­ day after day, night after night, endless and terrible.”  She flushed, but continued calmly:  “I had nigh sold myself to some young officer—­ some gay and heedless boy—­ a dozen times that winter—­ for a bit of bread—­ and so I might lie warm....  The army starved at Valley Forge....  God knows where and how I lived and famished through all that bitter blackness....  An artillery horse had trodden on my hip where I lay huddled in a cow-barn under the straw close to the horses, for the sake of warmth.  I hobbled for a month....  And so ill was I become in mind as well as body that had any man been kind—­ God knows what had happened!  And once I even crept abroad meaning to take what offered.  Do you deem me vile, Euan?”

“No—­ no—­ " I could not utter another word.

She sighed, gazing at space.

“And the cold!  Well—­ this is July, and I must try to put it from my mind.  But at times it seems to be still in my bones—­ deep bitten to the very marrow.  Ai-me!  I have seen two years of centuries.  Their scars remain.”

She rocked slightly forward and backward where she sat, her fingers interlaced, twisting and clenching with her memories.

“Ai-me!  Hunger and cold and men!  Hunger and—­ men.  But it was solitude that nigh undid me.  That was the worst of all—­ the endless silence.”

The rain now swept the roof of bark above us, gust after gust swishing across the eaves.  Beyond the outer circle of the lantern light a mouse moved, venturing no nearer.

“Lois?”

She lifted her head.  “All that is ended now.  Strive to forget.”

She made no response.

“Ended,” I said firmly.  “And this is how it ends.  I have with my solicitor, Mr. Simon Hake, of Albany, two thousand pounds hard sterling.  How I first came by it I do not know.  But Guy Johnson placed it there for me, saying that it was mine by right.  Now, today, I have written to Mr. Hake a letter.  In this letter I have commanded some few trifles to be bought for you, such as all women naturally require “Euan!” she exclaimed sharply.