The Weasel, rifle at a peaceful trail, came trotting up beside his giant comrade, standing on tiptoe to link arms with him, his solemn owl-like eyes roaming from Elsin Grey to me.
I named them to Elsin. She regarded them listlessly from her saddle, and they removed their round skull-caps of silver moleskin and bowed to her.
"I never thought to be so willing to meet rebel riflemen," she said, patting her horse's mane and glancing at me.
"Lord, Cade!" whispered Mount to his companion, "he's stolen a Tory maid from under their very noses! Make thy finest bow, man, for the credit o' Morgan's Men!"
And again the strange pair bowed low, caps in hand, the Weasel with quiet, quaint dignity, Mount with his elaborate rustic swagger, and a flourish peculiar to the forest-runner, gay, reckless, yet withal respectful.
A faint smile touched her eyes as she inclined her proud little head. Mount looked up at me. I nodded; and the two riflemen wheeled in their tracks and trotted forward, Mount leading, and his solemn little comrade following at heel, close as a hound. When they had disappeared over the hill's rocky summit our horses moved forward at a walk, breasting the crest, then slowly descended the northern slope, picking their way among the loosened slate and pebbles.
And now for the first time came to me a delicious thrill of exaltation in my new-found liberty. Free at last of that prison city. Free at last to look all men between the eyes. Free to bear arms, and use them, too, under a flag I had not seen in four long years save as they brought in our captured colors--a ragged, blood-blackened rag or two to match those silken standards lost at Bennington and Saratoga.
I looked up into the cloudless sky, I looked around me. I saw the tall trees tinted by the sun, I felt a free wind blowing from that wild north I loved so well.
I drew my lungs full. I opened wide my arms, easing each cramped muscle. I stretched my legs to the stirrup's length in sweetest content.
Down through a fragrant birch-grown road, smelling of fern and wintergreen and sassafras, we moved, the cool tinkle of moss-choked watercourses ever in our ears, mingling with melodies of woodland birds--shy, freedom-loving birds that came not with the robins to the city. Ah, I knew these birds, being country-bred--knew them one and all--the gray hermit, holy chorister of hymn divine, the white-throat, sweetly repeating his allegiance to his motherland of Canada, the great scarlet-tufted cock that drums on the bark in stillest depths, the lonely little creeping-birds that whimper up and down the trunks of forest trees, and the black-capped chickadee that fears not man, but cities--all these I listened to, and knew and loved as guerdons of that freedom which I had so long craved, and craved in vain.