Drawn by an overmastering impulse he moved rapidly down the valley.
Before reaching the clearing where the cabin stood, he turned aside,
ascended the right bank, and stopped at length beneath a great pine.
Here was a wooden cross, and as Dane stood and looked upon it his eyes
grew misty with tears. He remembered, as if it were but yesterday, the
morning he and his father had borne hither the frail body of the one
who had been everything to him. She had requested that this should be
her last resting-place where the storms of winter could not reach the
spot, and where the wind would make music in the trees overhead. The
day was very bright when they laid her there, and the birds were
singing and twittering about them. But for him there was no sunshine,
for his heart was almost breaking with grief. He knew that his father
felt badly, too, for his voice faltered as he began to read the Burial
Service. The grave was covered with snow now, and he wondered if his
father ever visited the place. But had the ground been bare, he would
have known. The well-worn path leading from the house to the grave
would have told its own tale. The big pine knew, and if endowed with
the power of human speech it would have told how every day during the
summer a lonely man came to that spot and covered the grave with fresh
wild flowers, sometimes remaining for hours, often with tears coursing
down his cheeks. Had the young man known of this he would not have
felt so bitter toward the one who had treated him so harshly.

Leaving at length the spot which was so sacred to him, Dane came to the
edge of the clearing. Here he stopped and looked intently at the cabin
before him. A light shone through the little window, and he heard
sounds of voices within. Then he started and hurried swiftly forward,
for loud, coarse oaths fell upon his ears. What he had feared was
actually happening. The rebels from the north were there awaiting the
coming of the others from the Washademoak. His father, then, had not