“And the immediate cause of all this sort of thing, my dear Madam,” he continued, as he rode alongside, “why, it seems to be just that girl Lily, that we had all the trouble about last year.  By the way, what’s become of that girl?  Too bad—­she was more than half white!”

[Illustration:  By the way, what’s become of that girl?]

“Yes, it is all about that girl Lily,” said Josephine slowly, restraining in her own soul the impulse to cry out the truth to him, to tell him why this girl was almost white, why she had features like his own.  “That is the trouble, I am afraid,—­that girl Lily, and her problem!  If we could understand all of that, perhaps we could see the reason for this anarchy!”

The group broke apart, as the exigencies of the road traveled required.  Now and again some conversation passed between the occupants of the carriage and the horsemen who loosely grouped about it as they advanced.  The great coach swayed its way on up through the woods into the hills, over a road never too good and now worse than usual.  They had thirty miles or more to drive, most of it after dark.  Could they make that distance in time?

Dunwody, moody, silent, yet tense, keyed to the highest point, now made little comment.  Even when left alone, he ventured upon no intimate theme with his companion in the coach; nor did she in turn speak upon any subject which admitted argument.  Once she congratulated him upon his recovery from what had seemed so dangerous a hurt.

“But that is nothing now,” he said.  “I got off better than I had any right,—­limp a little, maybe, but they say that even that is mostly a matter of habit now.  Jamieson says his fiddle string may have slipped a little!  And you?”

“Oh, perfectly well,” she answered.  “I even think I may be happy—­you know, I must start my French and English classes before long.”

Silent now in part as to matters present, wholly silent as to matters past, these two went on into the night, neither loosing the tight rein on self.  Swaying and jolting its way upward and outward into the wilder country, the coach at last had so far plunged into the night that they were almost within touch of the valley in which lay the Dunwody lands.  Eleazar, the trapper, rode on the box with the negro driver who had been impressed into service.  It was the old trapper who at length called for a halt.

“Listen!” said he.  “What is that?”

Dunwody heard him, and as the coach pulled up, thrust his head out of the window.  The sound was repeated.

“I hear it!” cried he.  “Rifle firing!  I’m afraid we’re going to be too late.  Drive on, there, fast!”

Finally they reached the point in the road just below the shut-in, where the hills fell back in the approach to the little circular valley.  Dunwody’s gaze was bent eagerly out and ahead.  “My God!” he exclaimed, at length.  “We are too late!  Look!”