Sparrow touched my arm and pointed down a glade at right angles with the path my lord was pursuing. Up this glade there was coming toward us another figure,--a small black figure that moved swiftly, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
Black Lamoral stood like a stone; the brown mare, too, had learned what meant a certain touch upon her shoulder. Sparrow and I, with small shame for our eavesdropping, bent to our saddlebows and looked sideways through tiny gaps in the crimson foliage.
My lord descended one side of the hollow, his heavy foot bringing down the dead leaves and loose earth; the Italian glided down the opposite side, disturbing the economy of the forest as little as a snake would have done.
"I thought I should never meet you," growled my lord. "I thought I had lost you and her and myself. This d-d red forest and this blue haze are enough to"--He broke off with an oath.
"I came as fast as I could," said the other. His voice was strange, thin and dreamy, matching his filmy eyes and his eternal, very faint smile. "Your poor physician congratulates your lordship upon the success that still attends you. Yours is a fortunate star, my lord."
"Then you have her safe?" cried my lord.
"Three miles from here, on the river bank, is a ring of pines, in which the trees grow so thick that it is always twilight. Ten years ago a man was murdered there, and Sir Thomas Dale chained the murderer to the tree beneath which his victim was buried, and left him to perish of hunger and thirst. That is the tale they tell at Jamestown. The wood is said to be haunted by murdered and murderer, and no one enters it or comes nearer to it than he can avoid: which makes it an excellent resort for those whom the dead cannot scare. The lady is there, my lord, with your four knaves to guard her. They do not know that the gloom and quiet of the place are due to more than nature."
My lord began to laugh. Either he had been drinking, or the success of his villainy had served for wine. "You are a man in a thousand, Nicolo!" he said. "How far above or below the ship is this fortunate wood?"
"Just opposite, my lord."
"Can a boat land easily?"
"A creek runs through the wood to the river. There needs but the appointed signal from the bank, and a boat from the Santa Teresa can be rowed up the stream to the very tree beneath which the lady sits."