"You! You took away our land, our dignity, and gave us nothing in return but the butt of your muskets. Do you wonder that it came to war? Then for years those of us with the courage to resist you were called `traitors', and hunted down like dogs. Now you say we are prisoners of war, and all we have to do is walk away." He paused, overwhelmed by the thought. "Can a man walk away from his past? Can the cold stones of the grave lose their shadow, and rotted flesh grow whole again to walk with the living? God damn you! We stand atop a pile of bodies four miles deep, over which you would hold a pretty picnic. And ten times ten thousand left to grieve. "Dear God, I cannot look at you, for the very sight is bile in my throat. When ignorance leads the blind, how black shall the blindness be?" He walked out of the room, with all feeling gone from his soul. Twenty-Seven The widow Scott opened her eyes in the chill hour of dawn. Indirect sunlight filtered through the high window, silhouetting the statued form of her niece, who stood in silence before it. At her side the girl held something metal that gleamed dully. Her eyes looked out unseeing. "Mary? What's that in your hand?" Slowly, as from a distance. "I've got to kill him." Once more Anne Scott felt herself in the presence of a will, a force that was beyond swaying. But she knew that she too had a part in the unfolding drama, and she would not watch idly as her niece destroyed herself. "Because of your mother? You think that you must follow her down the bitter road---" "You speak of what you cannot imagine." There was no answering obsession. The woman did not try. "How will you do it?" she asked simply. "They did not think to search us." Mary held up the slender blade that the witch had sewn into a fold of her dress, then forgotten. "Surely that, of itself, would not kill a man." "Human excrement makes a very effective blood poison." All said evenly, without emotion or remorse, without living movement of any kind. ... "Mary. Your mother left something for you." At this she turned, like a sleepwalker disturbed by the calling of her true name. "Stephen brought me this note. Her dying words." "A forgery," she stammered, "meant to dissuade me." "No," said Anne Scott firmly. "After twenty-nine years, I ought to know my sister's hand." "Don't come any closer." She raised the knife halfheartedly. "I don't want to see it." But Anne Scott continued forward, held out the folded sheet. Mary's left hand could not stop the right. She took the page and held it open against the angled sill. She read. A single tear escaped her, then another, till at last she dropped the blade and leaned heavily back against the stone. The tortured grip had managed but five words, the last broken and trailing, but undeniable. Mary, I love you. Forgive Anne Scott moved closer, and took the forlorn head to her shoulder. Mary did not resist. She only wept, unable for a time to speak.