Audrey

The girl awoke from her dream of self-murder with a cry of terror. Not the

river, good Lord, not the river! Not death, but life! With a second

shuddering cry she lifted hand and arm from the water, and with frantic

haste dried them upon the skirt of her dress. There had been none to hear

her. Upon the midnight river, between the dim forests that ever spoke, but

never listened, she was utterly alone. She took the oars again, and went

on her way up the river, rowing swiftly, for the mountains were far away,

and she might be pursued.

When she drew near to Jamestown she shot far out into the river, because

men might be astir in the boats about the town landing. Anchored in

midstream was a great ship,--a man-of-war, bristling with guns. Her boat

touched its shadow, and the lookout called to her. She bent her head, put

forth her strength, and left the black hull behind her. There was another

ship to pass, a slaver that had come in the evening before, and would land

its cargo at sunrise. The stench that arose from it was intolerable, and,

as the girl passed, a corpse, heavily weighted, was thrown into the water.

Audrey went swiftly by, and the river lay clean before her. The stars

paled and the dawn came, but she could not see the shores for the thick

white mist. A spectral boat, with a sail like a gray moth's wing, slipped

past her. The shadow at the helm was whistling for the wind, and the sound

came strange and shrill through the filmy, ashen morning. The mist began

to lift. A few moments now, and the river would lie dazzlingly bare

between the red and yellow forests. She turned her boat shorewards, and

presently forced it beneath the bronze-leafed, drooping boughs of a

sycamore. Here she left the boat, tying it to the tree, and hoping that it

was well hidden. The great fear at her heart was that, when she was

missed, Hugon would undertake to follow and to find her. He had the skill

to do so. Perhaps, after many days, when she was in sight of the

mountains, she might turn her head and, in that lonely land, see him

coming toward her.

The sun was shining, and the woods were gay above her head and gay beneath

her feet. When the wind blew, the colored leaves went before it like

flights of birds. She was hungry, and as she walked she ate a piece of

bread taken from the glebe-house larder. It was her plan to go rapidly

through the settled country, keeping as far as possible to the great

spaces of woodland which the axe had left untouched; sleeping in such dark

and hidden hollows as she could find; begging food only when she must, and

then from poor folk who would not stay her or be overcurious about her

business. As she went on, the houses, she knew, would be farther and

farther apart; the time would soon arrive when she might walk half a day

and see never a clearing in the deep woods. Then the hills would rise

about her, and far, far off she might see the mountains, fixed, cloudlike,

serene, and still, beyond the miles of rustling forest. There would be no

more great houses, built for ladies and gentlemen, but here and there, at

far distances, rude cabins, dwelt in by kind and simple folk. At such a

home, when the mountains had taken on a deeper blue, when the streams were

narrow and the level land only a memory, she would pause, would ask if she

might stay. What work was wanted she would do. Perhaps there would be

children, or a young girl like Molly, or a kind woman like Mistress Stagg;

and perhaps, after a long, long while, it would grow to seem to her like

that other cabin.