"All the principal ones—them that Trail denounced as leaders. The rest we pardoned after giving them a lesson they won’t soon forget. We let bygones be bygones with the redemptioners and slaves—all but those devils who got away that night at Verney Manor, and with Trail at their head, made for Captain Laramore’s ship which was going to turn pirate. Well, they got to the boats, and one lot got off safe to the ship which hoisted the black flag, and sailed away to the Indies, and is sailing there, murdering and ruining, to this day, I reckon. But the other boat was over full, and the steersman was drunken, and she capsized before she got to the middle of the channel. Some were drowned, and those that got ashore we hung next morning. But Trail was in the first boat." "When do you—do we—start down the river?" "At midnight. And it’s the Colonel’s orders that until then you stay here among the rocks and not show yourself to the men below. He ’ll see you before we start. In the mean time I ’ll keep you company." And the overseer took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filled the former, lighted it, and leaning back against the rock fell to smoking in contented silence. Landless too sat in silence, with his head thrown back against the rock and his face uplifted to the growing splendor of the skies. The night wind, blowing mournfully around the bare hill and the broken crag, struck upon his brow with a hint of winter in its touch. With it came the tide of forest sounds—the sough of the leaves, the dull creaking of branch against branch, the wash of the water in the reeds, the whirr of wings, the cries of night birds—all the low and stealthy notes of the earth chant which had become to him as old and tenderly familiar as the lullabies of his childhood. Below him, at the foot of the hill, a square of dark and stately pines was irradiated by a great fire which burnt redly, casting flickering shadows far across the smooth brown earth, and around which sat or moved many figures. Laughter and jest, oaths and scraps of song floated up to the lonely watcher upon the hilltop. He heeded them not—he was above that world—and no sound came from that other and smaller fire blazing at some distance from the first—and the tree trunks between were so many and so thick that he could see naught but the light. *CHAPTER XXXVII* *VALE*