Neville spoke no more, but tramped along, looking well to his footsteps, for he too found the ground wet and slippery with its thin glazing of ice. The treacherous Southern winter was in one of its relenting moods, and the morning air, even now before the sun was fully risen, held a hint of spring. The green pines sent forth their sweet odor, and a bird fluttered up and flapped his bright wings full in Neville's face. It was a morning to give a man courage for meeting life or for leaving it. Neville had faced danger and death too often to be wholly absorbed in his own fate, and now interwoven with his dull web of despair was a bright thread of enjoyment of the scene around him. Never will any romancer truly tell the story of a man's inner life till he takes cognizance of the many trains of thought, gay and sombre, that can slide on side by side, neither wholly filling nor dominating the mind. The tingling air, the slant sunshine, and the sense of unknown adventure awaiting him raised Neville's spirits, so that as a turn of the path brought the ketch in sight he found himself humming the refrain of a song,--a song he had first heard rippling from the lips of Elinor Calvert, oh, how many years ago, among the green fields of Somerset,-- "Greensleeves was all my joy, Greensleeves was my delight, Greensleeves was my heart of gold, Who but Lady Greensleeves?" The words called up a vision of Elinor as he had seen her at eighteen tripping along the forest paths of the Somerset woods, her robe as green as Maid Marian's and her floating sleeves catching ever and anon on bush or briar,--a blessed chance which gave her lover opportunity to bend over it and touch it with his lips whilst disentangling it slowly--oh, so slowly! And again he saw her in a dress of a similar fashion there in the hall of St. Gabriel's, and again she smiled upon him, and those warm slender fingers rested in his, and those perfect eyes unveiled their tender depths before his gaze. To have come so near and then to have lost--oh, it was unbearable!--and he kicked viciously at the innocent root of a tree in his path. As the last words left his lips, his mood sank to despair again. "Look alive there, sir! Jump aboard, Philpotts, and loosen that forward sheet! Sir Christopher, step on that board and you'll reach the stern easy! That's your seat by the helm." "You are shivering," said the younger man, who had scarcely spoken till now. "Take my cloak." "No, no," reproved his elder, "not too much softness to the Governor's prisoner! He'll do very well for a while yet with his jerkin and doublet. Come on! we need your help there forward."