A more retired spot, a completer sequestration from the world of mart and highway, it would have been hard to find. In the quiet of the early morning, when the shadows of the trees lay across the dewy grass, it was an angle of the earth as cloistral and withdrawn as heart of scholar or of anchorite could wish. On one side of the house lay a tiny orchard, and the windows of the living room looked out upon a mist of pink and white apple blooms. The fragrance of the blossoms had been in the room, but could not prevail against the odor of tobacco and rum lately introduced by the master of the house and minister of the parish. Audrey, sitting beside a table which had been drawn in front of the window, turned her face aside, and was away, sense and soul, out of the meanly furnished room into the midst of the great bouquets of bloom, with the blue between and above. Darden, walking up and down, with his pipe in his mouth, and the tobacco smoke curling like an aureole around his bullet head, glanced toward the window.

"When you have written that which I have told you to write, say so, Audrey," he commanded. "Don't sit there staring at nothing!"

Audrey came back to the present with a start, took up a pen, and drew the standish nearer. "'Answer of Gideon Darden, Minister of Fair View Parish, in Virginia, to the several Queries contained in my Lord Bishop of London's Circular Letter to the Clergy in Virginia,'" she read, and poised her pen in air.

Going to a side table, be mixed for himself, in an old battered silver cap, a generous draught of bombo; then, with the drink in his hand, walked heavily across the uncarpeted floor to his armchair, which creaked under his weight as he sank into its leathern lap. He put down the rum and water with so unsteady a hand that the liquor spilled, and when he refilled his pipe half the contents of his tobacco box showered down upon his frayed and ancient and unclean coat and breeches. From the pocket of the latter he now drew forth a silver coin, which he balanced for a moment upon his fat forefinger, and finally sent spinning across the table to Audrey.

"'Tis the dregs of thy guinea, child, that Paris and Hugon and I drank at the crossroads last night. 'Burn me,' says I to them, 'if that long-legged lass of mine shan't have a drop in the cup!' And say Hugon"—

What Hugon said did not appear, or was confided to the depths of the tankard which the minister raised to his lips. Audrey looked at the splendid shilling gleaming upon the table beside her, but made no motion toward taking it into closer possession. A little red had come into the clear brown of her cheeks. She was a young girl, with her dreams and fancies, and the golden guinea would have made a dream or two come true.

"'Query the first,'" she read slowly, "'How long since you went to the plantations as missionary?'"

Audrey, writing in a slow, fair, clerkly hand, made her period, and turned to the Bishop's second question: "'Had you any other church before you came to that which you now possess?'"

"'No, my Lord,'" said the minister to the Bishop; then to the ceiling: "I came raw from the devil to this parish. Audrey, hast ever heard children say that Satan comes and walks behind me when I go through the forest?"

"Yes," said Audrey, "but their eyes are not good. You go hand in hand."

Darden paused in the lifting of his tankard. "Thy wits are brightening, Audrey; but keep such observations to thyself. It is only the schoolmaster with whom I walk. Go on to the next question."

"You are only a woman, and can hold no office, Audrey," he said, "but I will impart to you words of wisdom whose price is above rubies. Always agree with your vestry. Go, hat in hand, to each of its members in turn, craving advice as to the management of your own affairs. Thunder from the pulpit against Popery, which does not exist in this colony, and the Pretender, who is at present in Italy. Wrap a dozen black sheep of inferior breed in white sheets and set them arow at the church door, but make it stuff of the conscience to see no blemish in the wealthier and more honorable portion of your flock. So you will thrive, and come to be inducted into your living, whether in Virginia or some other quarter of the globe. What's the worthy Bishop's next demand? Hasten, for Hugon is coming this morning, and there's settlement to be made of a small bet, and a hand at cards."

By the circular letter and the lips of Audrey the Bishop proceeded to propound a series of questions, which the minister answered with portentous glibness. In the midst of an estimate of the value of a living in a sweet-scented parish a face looked in at the window, and a dark and sinewy hand laid before Audrey a bunch of scarlet columbine.

"The rock was high," said a voice, "and the pool beneath was deep and dark. Here are the flowers that waved from the rock and threw colored shadows upon the pool."

"Ha, Hugon, dog of a trader!" he cried. "Come in, man. Hast brought the skins? There's fire-water upon the table, and Audrey will be kind. Stay to dinner, and tell us what lading you brought down river, and of your kindred in the forest and your kindred in Monacan-Town."

The man at the window shrugged his shoulders, lifted his brows, and spread his hands. So a captain of Mousquetaires might have done; but the face was dark-skinned, the cheek-bones were high, the black eyes large, fierce, and restless. A great bushy peruke, of an ancient fashion, and a coarse, much-laced cravat gave setting and lent a touch of grotesqueness and of terror to a countenance wherein the blood of the red man warred with that of the white.

"I will not come in now," said the voice again. "I am going in my boat to the big creek to take twelve doeskins to an old man named Taberer. I will come back to dinner. May I not, ma'm'selle?"

The corners of the lips went up, and the thicket of false hair swept the window sill, so low did the white man bow; but the Indian eyes were watchful. Audrey made no answer; she stood with her face turned away and her eyes upon the door, measuring her chances. If Darden would let her pass, she might reach the stairway and her own room before the trader could enter the house. There were bolts to its heavy door, and Hugon might do as he had done before, and talk his heart out upon the wrong side of the wood. Thanks be! lying upon her bed and pressing the pillow over her ears, she did not have to hear.

"I will come again," said the voice without, and the apparition was gone from the window. Once more blue sky and rosy bloom spanned the opening, and the sunshine lay in a square upon the floor. The girl drew a long breath, and turning to the table began to arrange the papers upon it with trembling hands.

"'Sixteen thousand pounds of sweet-scented, at ten shillings the hundredweight; for marriage by banns, five shillings; for the preaching of a funeral sermon, forty shillings; for christening'"—began Darden for the Bishop's information. Audrey took her pen and wrote; but before the list of the minister's perquisites had come to an end the door flew open, and a woman with the face of a vixen came hurriedly into the room. With her entered the breeze from the river, driving before it the smoke wreaths, and blowing the papers from the table to the floor.

Darden stamped his foot. "Woman, I have business, I tell ye,—business with the Bishop of London! I've kept his Lordship at the door this se'nnight, and if I give him not audience Blair will presently be down uon me with tooth and nail and his ancient threat of a visitation. Begone and keep the house! Audrey, where are you, child?"

"Audrey, leave the room!" commanded the woman. "I have something to say that's not for your ears. Let her go, Darden. There's news, I tell you."

"Well?" demanded Darden, when the sound of the quick young feet had died away. "Open your budget, Deborah. There's naught in it, I'll swear, but some fal-lal about your flowered gown or an old woman's black cat and corner broomstick."

Mistress Deborah Darden pressed her thin lips together, and eyed her lord and master with scant measure of conjugal fondness. "It's about some one nearer home than your bishops and commissaries," she said. "Hide passed by this morning, going to the river field. I was in the garden, and he stopped to speak to me. Mr. Haward is home from England. He came to the great house last night, and he ordered his horse for ten o'clock this morning, and asked the nearest way through the fields to the parsonage."

Darden whistled, and put down his drink untasted.

"Enter the most powerful gentleman of my vestry!" he exclaimed. "He'll be that in a month's time. A member of the Council, too, no doubt, and with the Governor's ear. He's a scholar and fine gentleman. Deborah, clear away this trash. Lay out my books, fetch a bottle of Canary, and give me my Sunday coat. Put flowers on the table, and a dish of bonchrétiens, and get on your tabby gown. Make your curtsy at the door; then leave him to me."

"And Audrey?" said his wife.

Darden, about to rise, sank back again and sat still, a hand upon either arm of his chair. "Eh!" he said; then, in a meditative tone, "That is so,—there is Audrey."

"Why, it's gone," answered Darden "Gone in maintenance,—gone in meat and drink and raiment. He didn't want it buried. Pshaw, Deborah, he has quite forgot his fine-lady plan! He forgot it years ago, I'll swear."

"I'll send her now on an errand to the Widow Constance's," said the mistress of the house. "Then before he comes again I'll get her a gown"—

The minister brought his hand down upon the table. "You'll do no such thing!" he thundered. "The girl's got to be here when he comes. As for her dress, can't she borrow from you? The Lord knows that though only the wife of a poor parson, you might throw for gewgaws with a bona roba! Go trick her out, and bring her here. I'll attend to the wine and the books."

When the door opened again, and Audrey, alarmed and wondering, slipped with the wind into the room, and stood in the sunshine before the minister, that worthy first frowned, then laughed, and finally swore.

"'Swounds, Deborah, your hand is out! If I hadn't taken you from service, I'd swear that you were never inside a fine lady's chamber. What's the matter with the girl's skirt?"

"She's too tall!" cried the sometime waiting woman angrily. "As for that great stain upon the silk, the wine made it when you threw your tankard at me, last Sunday but one."

While Audrey slowly revolved, the guardian of her fortunes, leaning back in his chair, bent his bushy brows and gazed, not at the circling figure in its tawdry apparel, but into the distance. When she stood still and looked at him with a half-angry, half-frightened face, he brought his bleared eyes to bear upon her, studied her for a minute, then motioned to his wife.

"She must take off this paltry finery, Deborah," he announced. "I'll have none of it. Go, child, and don your Cinderella gown."

"What does it all mean?" cried Audrey, with heaving bosom. "Why did she put these things upon me, and why will she tell me nothing? If Hugon has hand in it"—

The minister made a gesture of contempt. "Hugon! Hugon, half Monacan and half Frenchman, is bartering skins with a Quaker. Begone, child, and when you are transformed return to us."

When the door had closed he turned upon his wife. "The girl has been cared for," he said. "She has been fed,—if not with cates and dainties, then with bread and meat; she has been clothed,—if not in silk and lace, then in good blue linen and penistone. She is young and of the springtime, hath more learning than had many a princess of old times, is innocent and good to look at. Thou and the rest of thy sex are fools, Deborah, but wise men died not with Solomon. It matters not about her dress."

"Hugon would marry the girl," said the latter, twisting the hem of her apron with restless fingers.

Without change of countenance, Darden leaned forward, seized her by the shoulder and shook her violently. "You are too given to idle and meaningless words, Deborah," he declared, releasing her. "By the Lord, one of these days I'll break you of the habit for good and all! Hugon, and scarlet flowers, and who will marry Audrey, that is yet but a child and useful about the house,—what has all this to do with the matter in hand, which is simply to make ourselves and our house presentable in the eyes of my chief parishioner? A man would think that thirteen years in Virginia would teach any fool the necessity of standing well with a powerful gentleman such as this. I'm no coward. Damn sanctimonious parsons and my Lord Bishop's Scotch hireling! If they yelp much longer at my heels, I'll scandalize them in good earnest! It's thin ice, though,—it's thin ice; but I like this house and glebe, and I'm going to live and die in them,—and die drunk, if I choose, Mr. Commissary to the contrary! It's of import, Deborah, that my parishioners, being easy folk, willing to live and let live, should like me still, and that a majority of my vestry should not be able to get on without me. With this in mind, get out the wine, dust the best chair, and be ready with thy curtsy. It will be time enough to cry Audrey's banns when she is asked in marriage."

By human measurement the house that she had left was hard by; even from under the beech-tree Mistress Deborah's thin call could draw her back to the walls which sheltered her, which she had been taught to call her home. But it was not her soul's home, and now the veil of the kindly woods withdrew it league on league, shut it out, made it as if it had never been. From the charmed ring beneath the beech-tree she took possession of her world; for her the wind murmured, the birds sang, insects hummed or shrilled, the green saplings nodded their heads. Flowers, and the bedded moss, and the little stream that leaped from a precipice of three feet into the calm of a hand-deep pool spoke to her. She was happy. Gone was the house and its inmates; gone Paris the schoolmaster, who had taught her to write, and whose hand touching hers in guidance made her sick and cold; gone Hugon the trader, whom she feared and hated. Here were no toil, no annoy, no frightened flutterings of the heart; she had passed the frontier, and was safe in her own land.

She pressed her cheek against the dead leaves, and, with the smell of the earth in her nostrils, looked sideways with half-closed eyes and made a radiant mist of the forest round about. A drowsy warmth was in the air; the birds sang far away; through a rift in the foliage a sunbeam came and rested beside her like A gilded snake.