Already Penfold ceased to struggle beneath her soothing hands. The fires blazed fiercely, the smoke and hot vapours being drawn upwards into the natural chimneys. Obeying instructions, the men placed their sick comrade between these fires and covered him closely, while the skilful healer moistened his brow and lips with water in which she had steeped the young pink bark of the bitter willow, thus wringing the fever out of his body like water from a sponge. "I am saving the old man," she whispered in a confident voice. At the end of another hour the limp rag of humanity was steeped in sleep. By then the night was strong and the stars little orbs in splendour among the clouds. The breathing which the men heard when Mary Iden rose from her knees might have been that of a little child. "The evil spirit has been driven forth to find water. Lift the man quickly; for the foul creature travels faster than the moonlight." Obedient to superior knowledge, the men reconveyed the sleeper to the grass bed, and there the healer roused him to administer a decoction of bruised herbs: serrated calamintha, the perfoliate eupator, later more popularly known as the fever-wort of North America, and the white-rayed pyrethrum, which lifted its bitter bloom upon the heights. The sick man gasped as he swallowed the powerful tonic, and sank back into untroubled rest. Presently the knight and his wife departed, and Hough accompanied them upon the first stage of their return journey; and when they reached the lake-side, where the canoe sprawled along the shingle, the knight acquainted his fellow-countryman with his plan of departure. Hough listened, gazing dimly over the scintillating surface, where a silver ribbon of moonlight led away to the Isle of Dreams. "Where lies that land whither you go?" he asked at length. "In the far east where Sebastian Cabot first touched," the Kentishman replied. "There I may sight the great ocean, which we islanders love, and scent the good brine and watch for an English sail." "Here there is nothing we may do," said Hough, removing his eyes from the dreamy lake. "There surely we may look for the ship which Lord Baltimore shall send when Viner comes down to Virginia. I too would be near the sea and smell liberty." With that they parted, and Hough returned to his hole among the rocks with visions of the sea. Within that cave, where Penfold slept during his guardian's absence, the fires darted, tincturing with red the silver of the moonbeams against the sable wall of cliff. Between the granite and the forest of pines a stream of moonlight spread like a glacier. A figure stole from the black belt, stepped cautiously into the white road, and waded, as it were, through the rippling beams. It was Onawa, who had watched the two men and her sister making west; she knew that one of the men would return after a little interval; and she understood that the work which she had undertaken must be done quickly.