star shone out, and a hot wind, heavy with the smell of the forest, moved
the hemlock boughs and rustled in the laurels.

The white man and the negro, each leading his horse, picked their way with
caution among the pitfalls of the rocky and uneven road. With the passing
of the Governor and his train a sudden cure had been wrought, for now
Haward's step was as firm and light as it had been before his fall. The
negro looked at him once or twice with a puzzled face, but made no comment
and received no enlightenment. Indeed, so difficult was their way that
they were left but scant leisure for speech. Moment by moment the darkness
deepened, and once Haward's horse came to its knees, crashing down among
the rocks and awakening every echo.

The way, if hard, was short. The hills fell farther apart, the banks
became low and broad, and fair in front, between two slender pines, shone
out the great round moon. Leaving the bed of the stream, the two men
entered a pine wood, dim and fragrant and easy to thread. The moon rose
higher, and the light fell in wide shafts between trees that stood well
apart, with no vines to grapple one to another or undergrowth to press
about their knees.

There needed no watchfulness: the ground was smooth, the light was fair;
no motion save the pale flicker of the fireflies, no sound save the sigh
of the night wind in the boughs that were so high overhead. Master and
man, riding slowly and steadily onward through a wood that seemed
interminably the same, came at last to think of other things than the road
which they were traveling. Their hands lost grasp upon the reins, and
their eyes, ceasing to glance now here, now there, gazed steadfastly down
the gray and dreamlike vista before them, and saw no longer hole and
branch, moonlight and the white scars that the axe had made for guidance.