"Was there ever one like her?" repeated Mary Cavendish, and as she
spoke, up she sprang and ran to her sister and flung a fair arm
around her neck, and drew her head to her bosom, and leaned her
cheek against it, and then looked at me with a sidewise glance which
made my heart leap, for curious meanings, of which the innocent
thing had no reckoning, were in it.
I know not what I said. Truly not much, for the mockery of it all
was past my power of dealing with and keeping my respect of self.
I got my fowling-piece from the peg on the wall, and was forth and
ranging the wooded shores, with my eyes intent on the whirring
flight of the birds, and my mind on that problem of the times which
always hath, and doth, and always will, encounter a man who lives
with any understanding of what is about him, but not always as
sorely as in my case, who faced, as it were, an army of
difficulties, bound hand and foot. But after a while the sport in
which I was fairly skilled, and that sense of power which cometh to
one from the proving of his superiority over the life and death of
some weaker creation, and the salt air in my nostrils, gave me, as
it were, a glimpse of a farther horizon than the present one of
Virginia in 1682, and mine own little place in it. Then verily I
could seem to see and scent like some keen hound a smoothness which
should later come from the tangled web of circumstances, and a
greatness which should encompass mine own smallness of perplexity.
When I was wending my way back to Drake Hill, with my gun over
shoulder and some fine birds in hand, I met Sir Humphrey Hyde.
We were near Locust Creek, and the great house stood still and white
in the sunlight, and there was no life around it except for the
distant crawl of toil over the green of the tobacco fields and the
great hum of the bees in the flowering honey locusts which gave,
with the creek, the place its name. Sir Humphrey was coming from the
direction of the house, riding slowly, stooping in the saddle as if
with thought, and I guessed that he had been to see to the safety of
the contraband goods. When he saw me he halted and shouted, in his
hearty, boyish way, "Halloo, halloo, Harry, and what luck?" as if
all there was of moment in the whole world, and Virginia in
particular, was the shooting of birds on a May morning. But then his
face clouded, and he spoke earnestly enough. "Harry, Harry," he
said, in a whisper, though there was no life nearer than the bees,
and they no bearers of secrets, except those of the flowers, "I pray
thee, come back to the hall with me, and let us consult together."