It was cold upon the river, and sere leaves, loosening their hold upon that which had given them life, drifted down upon her as she rowed beneath arching trees. When she left the dark bank for the unshadowed stream, the wind struck her brow and the glittering stars perplexed her. There were so many of them. When one shot, she knew that a soul had left the earth. Another fell, and another,—it must be a good night for dying. She ceased to row, and, leaning over, dipped her hand and arm into the black water. The movement brought the gunwale of the boat even with the flood.... Say that one leaned over a little farther ... there would fall another star. God gathered the stars in his hand, but he would surely be angry with one that came before it was called, and the star would sink past him into a night forever dreadful.... The water was cold and deep and black. Great fish throve in it, and below was a bed of ooze and mud....

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.

All that day she walked, keeping as far as was possible to the woods, but forced now and again to traverse open fields and long stretches of sunny road. If she saw any one coming, she hid in the roadside bushes, or, if that could not be done, walked steadily onward, with her head bent and her heart beating fast. It must have been a day for minding one's own business, for none stayed or questioned her. Her dinner she begged from some children whom she found in a wood gathering nuts. Supper she had none. When night fell, she was glad to lay herself down upon a bed of leaves that she had raked together; but she slept little, for the wind moaned in the half-clad branches, and she could not cease from counting the stars that shot. In the morning, numbed and cold, she went slowly on until she came to a wayside house. Quaker folk lived there; and they asked her no question, but with kind words gave her of what they had, and let her rest and grow warm in the sunshine upon their doorstep. She thanked them with shy grace, but presently, when they were not looking, rose and went her way. Upon the second day she kept to the road. It was loss of time wandering in the woods, skirting thicket and marsh, forced ever and again to return to the beaten track. She thought, also, that she must be safe, so far was she now from Fair View. How could they guess that she was gone to the mountains?

A wild leap of her heart, a singing in her ears, and Audrey clutched at safety.

"I be Joan, the smith's daughter," she said stolidly. "I niver ran for a guinea. I niver saw a guinea. I be going an errand for feyther."

"Ecod, then!" said the other man. "You're on a wrong scent. 'Twas no dolt that ran that day!"

The man who had touched her laughed. "'Facks, you are right, Tom! But I'd ha' sworn 't was that brown girl. Go your ways on your errand for 'feyther'!" As he spoke, being of an amorous turn, he stooped from his saddle and kissed her. Audrey, since she was at that time not Audrey at all, but Joan, the smith's daughter, took the salute as stolidly as she had spoken. The two men rode away, and the second said to the first: "A Williamsburgh man told me that the girl who won the guinea could speak and look like a born lady. Didn't ye hear the story of how she went to the Governor's ball, all tricked out, dancing, and making people think she was some fine dame from Maryland maybe? And the next day she was scored in church before all the town. I don't know as they put a white sheet on her, but they say 't was no more than her deserts."

Late that afternoon she came upon two or three rude dwellings clustered about a mill. A knot of men, the miller in the midst, stood and gazed at the mill-stream. They wore an angry look; and Audrey passed them hastily by. At the farthest house she paused to beg a piece of bread; but the woman who came to the door frowned and roughly bade her begone, and a child threw a stone at her. "One witch is enough to take the bread out of poor folks' mouths!" cried the woman. "Be off, or I'll set the dogs on ye!" The children ran after her as she hastened from the inhospitable neighborhood. "'T is a young witch," they cried, "going to help the old one swim to-night!" and a stone struck her, bruising her shoulder.

The window shutter creaked ever so slightly, and some one looked out; then the door opened, and a very old and wrinkled woman, with lines of cunning about her mouth, laid her hand upon the girl's arm. "Who be ye?" she whispered. "Did ye bring warning? I don't say, mind ye, that I can't make a stream go dry,—maybe I can and maybe I can't,—but I didn't put a word on the one yonder." She threw up her arms with a wailing cry. "But they won't believe what a poor old soul says! Are they in an evil temper, honey?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Audrey. "I have come a long way, and I am hungry and tired. Give me a piece of bread, and let me stay with you to-night."

The old woman moved aside, and the girl, entering a room that was mean and poor enough, sat down upon a stool beside the fire. "If ye came by the mill," demanded her hostess, with a suspicious eye, "why did ye not stop there for bite and sup?"

"The men were all talking together," answered Audrey wearily. "They looked so angry that I was afraid of them. I did stop at one house; but the woman bade me begone, and the children threw stones at me and called me a witch."

The crone stooped and stirred the fire; then from a cupboard brought forth bread and a little red wine, and set them before the girl. "They called you a witch, did they?" she mumbled as she went to and fro. "And the men were talking and planning together?"

Going to the window, she dropped a heavy bar across the shutter. "Ye'll put the chain across the door when I'm out," she commanded. "There be evil-disposed folk may want to win in." Coming back to the girl, she laid a skinny hand upon her arm. Whether with palsy or with fright the hand shook like a leaf, but Audrey, half asleep again, noticed little beyond the fact that the fire warmed her, and that here at last was rest. "If there should come a knocking and a calling, honey," whispered the witch, "don't ye answer to it or unbar the door. Ye'll save time for me that way. But if they win in, tell them I went to the northward."

Audrey fell fast asleep; and while she was asleep and the night was yet young, the miller whose mill stream had run dry, the keeper of a tippling house whose custom had dwindled, the ferryman whose child had peaked and pined and died, came with a score of men to reckon with the witch who had done the mischief. Finding door and window fast shut, they knocked, softly at first, then loudly and with threats. One watched the chimney, to see that the witch did not ride forth that way; and the father of the child wished to gather brush, pile it against the entrance, and set all afire. The miller, who was a man of strength, ended the matter by breaking in the door. They knew that the witch was there, because they had heard her moving about, and, when the door gave, a cry of affright. When, however, they had laid hands upon her, and dragged her out under the stars, into the light of the torches they carried, they found that the witch, who, as was well known, could slip her shape as a snake slips its skin, was no longer old and bowed, but straight and young.

"Let me go!" cried Audrey. "How dare you hold me! I never harmed one of you. I am a poor girl come from a long way off"—

"Ay, a long way!" exclaimed the ferryman. "More leagues, I'll warrant, than there are miles in Virginia! We'll see if ye can swim home, ye witch!"

One of the torchbearers gave ground a little. "She do look mortal young. But where be the witch, then?"

Audrey strove to shake herself free. "The old woman left me alone in the house. She went to—to the northward."

"She lies!" cried the ferryman, addressing himself to the angry throng. The torches, flaming in the night wind, gave forth a streaming, uncertain, and bewildering light; to the excited imaginations of the rustic avengers, the form in the midst of them was not always that of a young girl, but now and again wavered toward the semblance of the hag who had wrought them evil. "Before the child died he talked forever of somebody young and fair that came and stood by him when he slept. We thought 't was his dead mother, but now—now I see who 't was!" Seizing the girl by the wrists, he burst with her through the crowd. "Let the water touch her, she'll turn witch again!"

The excited throng, blinded by its own imagination, took up the cry. The girl's voice was drowned; she set her lips, and strove dumbly with her captors; but they swept her through the weed-grown garden and broken gate, past the cedars that were so ragged and black, down to the cold and deep water. She thought of the night upon the river and of the falling stars, and with a sudden, piercing cry struggled fiercely to escape. The bank was steep; hands pushed her forward: she felt the ghastly embrace of the water, and saw, ere the flood closed over her upturned face, the cold and quiet stars.

The man who had sprung to save her held her up to arms that reached down from the bank above; another moment and she felt the earth again beneath her feet, but could only think that, with half the dying past, these strangers had been cruel to bring her back. Her rescuer shook himself like a great dog. "I've saved the witch alive," he panted. "May God forgive and your Honor reward me!"

"Nay, worthy constable, you must look to Sathanas for reward!" cried the gentleman who had been haranguing the miller and his company. These gentry, hardly convinced, but not prepared to debate the matter with a justice of the peace and a great man of those parts, began to slip away. The torchbearers, probably averse to holding a light to their own countenances, had flung the torches into the water, and now, heavily shadowed by the cedars, the place was in deep darkness. Presently there were left to berate only the miller and the ferryman, and at last these also went sullenly away without having troubled to mention the witch's late transformation from age to youth.

"My name is Saunders,—Dick Saunders, your Honor," quoth the constable. "For the witch, she lies quiet on the ground beneath the cedar yonder."

"She won't speak!" cried another. "She just lies there trembling, with her face in her hands."

"But she said, 'O Christ!' when we took her from the water," put in a third.

"She was nigh drowned," ended the constable. "And I'm a-tremble myself, the water was that cold. Wauns! I wish I were in the chimney corner at the Court House ordinary!"

The master of Westover flung his riding cloak to one of the constable's men. "Wrap it around the shivering iniquity on the ground yonder; and you, Tom Hope, that brought warning of what your neighbors would do, mount and take the witch behind you. Master Constable, you will lodge Hecate in the gaol to-night, and in the morning bring her up to the great house. We would inquire why a lady so accomplished that she can dry a mill stream to plague a miller cannot drain a pool to save herself from drowning!"

At a crossing of the ways, shortly before Court House, gaol, and ordinary were reached, the adventurous Colonel gave a good-night to the constable and his company, and, with a negro servant at his heels, rode gayly on beneath the stars to his house at Westover. Hardy, alert, in love with living, he was well amused by the night's proceedings. The incident should figure in his next letter to Orrery or to his cousin Taylor.

The Colonel kissed his wife, promised his daughter to be merciful, and, humming a song, went through the hall to the open house door and the broad, three-sided steps of stone. The constable was awaiting him.

"Here be mysteries, your Honor! As I serve the King, 't weren't Goody Price for whom I ruined my new frieze, but a slip of a girl!" He waved his hand. "Will your Honor please to look?"

Audrey sat in the sunshine upon the stone steps with her head bowed upon her arms. The morning that was so bright was not bright for her; she thought that life had used her but unkindly. A great tree, growing close to the house, sent leaves of dull gold adrift, and they lay at her feet and upon the skirt of her dress. The constable spoke to her: "Now, mistress, here's a gentleman as stands for the King and the law. Look up!"

A white hand was laid upon the Colonel's arm. "I came to make sure that you were not harsh with the poor creature," said Evelyn's pitying voice. "There is so much misery. Where is she? Ah!"

Audrey rose, and turned her face, not to the justice of the peace and arbiter of the fate of witches, but to Evelyn, standing above her,—Evelyn, slighter, paler, than she had been at Williamsburgh, but beautiful in her colored, fragrant silks and the air that was hers of sweet and mournful distinction. Now she cried out sharply, while "That girl again!" swore the Colonel, beneath his breath.

Audrey did as she had been told, and made her curtsy. Then, while father and daughter stared at her, the gentleman very red and biting his lip, the lady marble in her loveliness, she tried to speak, to ask them to let her go, but found no words. The face of Evelyn, at whom alone she looked, wavered into distance, gazing at her coldly and mournfully from miles away. She made a faint gesture of weariness and despair; then sank down at Evelyn's feet, and lay there in a swoon.