"I wait a
little, but not long. You too will follow, brother, to where the hawks
wheel and the streams fall in vapour. There we shall find death or
love, I know not which, but it will be a great finding. The gods have
written it on my heart."
Then he turned and strode away, and I did not dare to question him.
There was that about him which stirred my prosaic soul into a wild
poetry, till for the moment I saw with his eyes, and heard strange
voices in the trees.
Apart from these uncanny moods he was the most faithful helper in my
task. Without him I must have been a mere child. I could not read the
lore of the forest; I could not have found my way as he found it
through pathless places. From him, too, I learned that we were not to
make our preparations unwatched.
Once, as we were coming from the Rappahannock to the York, he darted
suddenly into the undergrowth below the chestnuts. My eye could see no
clue on the path, and, suspecting nothing, I waited on him to return.
Presently he came, and beckoned me to follow. Thirty yards into the
coppice we found a man lying dead, with a sharp stake holding him to
the ground, and a raw, red mass where had been once his head.
"That was your messenger, brother," he whispered, "the one who was to
carry word from the Mattaponey to the north.
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