body slipped away through the tall weeds and clumps of alder, like the larger edition of the thing that had hung upon its shoulder. The overseer strode off down the field, sending keen glances to right and left. He was a conscientious man, and earned every pound of his wages.
Landless, left alone, worked steadily on, for he had no mind to lose his midday meal, uninviting as he knew it would prove to be. Moreover, he was one who did with his might what his hand found to do. His body was weary, and his heart sick within him, but the green shoots fell thick and fast.
"Yon was a kindly thing you did. Pity 'twas in no better cause than the saving of a worthless natural."
The speaker, who was at work on the next row of plants, had caught up with Landless from behind, and now moved his nimble fingers more slowly, so as to keep pace with the less expert new hand.
Landless, raising his head, stared at a figure of positively terrifying aspect. Upon a skeleton body of extraordinary height was set a head bare of any hair. Scalp, forehead and cheeks were of one dull, ivory hue like an eastern carving. Upon the smooth, dead surface of the right cheek sprawled a great red R, branded into the flesh, and through each large protruding ear went a ragged hole. For the rest, the lips were of iron, and the small, deep-set eyes were so bright and burning that they gave the impression that they were red like the great letter. It might have been the face of a man of sixty years, though it would have been hard to tell wherein lay the semblance of age, so smooth was the skin and so brilliant the eyes.
"The Indian needed help. Why should I not have given it him?" said Landless.
"Because it is written, 'Cursed are the heathen who inhabit the land.'"
Landless smiled. "So you would not help an Indian in extremity. What if it had been a negro?"
"Cursed are the negroes! 'Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by the sword.'"
"A Quaker?"
"Cursed are the Quakers! 'Silly doves that have no heart.'"
Landless laughed. "You have cursed pretty well all the oppressed of the land. I suppose you reserve your blessings for the powers that be."
"The powers that be! May the plagues of Egypt light upon them, and the seven vials rain down their contents upon them! Cursed be they all, from the young man, Charles Stuart, to that prelatical, tyrannical, noxious Malignant, William Berkeley! May their names become a hissing and an abomination! Roaring lions are their princes, ravening wolves are their judges, their priests have polluted the sanctuary! May their flesh consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes consume away in their holes, and their tongues consume away in their mouths, and may there be mourning among them, even as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon!"
"You are a Muggletonian?"
"Yea, verily am I! a follower of the saintly Ludovick Muggleton, and of the saintlier John Reeve, of whom Ludovick is but the mouthpiece, even as Aaron was of Moses. They are the two witnesses of the Apocalypse. They are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks. To them and to their followers it is given to curse and to spare not, to prophesy against the peoples and kindred and nations and tongues whereon is set the seal of the beast. Wherefore I, Win-Grace Porringer, testify against the people of this land; against Prelatists and Papists, Presbyterians and Independents, Baptists, Quakers and heathen; against princes, governors, and men in high places; against them that call themselves planters and trample the vineyard of the Lord; against their sons and their daughters who are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth neck and wanton eyes, walking and mincing and making a tinkling with their feet. Cursed be they all! Surely they shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah, even the breeding of salt-pits and a perpetual desolation!"
"Your curses seem not to have availed, friend," said Landless. "Curses are apt to come home to roost. I should judge that yours have returned to you in the shape of branding-irons."
The man raised a skeleton hand and stroked the red letter.
"This," he said coolly, "was given me when I ran away the second time. The first time I was merely whipped. The third time I was shaven and this shackle put upon my leg." He raised his foot and pointed to an iron ring encircling the ankle. "The fourth time I was nailed by the ears to the pillory, whence come these pretty scars."
Landless burst into grim laughter. "And after your fifth attempt, what then?"
The man gave him a sidelong look. "I have not made my fifth attempt," he said quietly.
They worked in silence for a few minutes. Then said Master Win-Grace Porringer:—
"I was sent to the plantations, because, in defiance of the Act of Uniformity (cursed be it, and the authors thereof), I attended a meeting of the persecuted and broken remnant of the Lord's people. What was your offense, friend, for I reckon that you come not here of your free will, being neither a rustic nor a fool?"
"I came from Newgate," said Landless, after a pause. "I am a convict."
The man's hand stopped in the act of pulling off a shoot. He gave a slow upward look at the figure beside him, let his eyes rest upon the face, and looked slowly down again with a shake of the head.
"Humph!" he said. "The society in Newgate must be improved since my time."
They worked without speaking until they had nearly reached the end of the long double row, when said the Muggletonian:—
"You are too young, I take it, to have seen service in the wars?"
"I fought at Worcester."
"Upon which side?"
"The Commonwealth's."
"I thought as much. Humph! You were all, Parliament and Presbytery, Puritan and Independent, Hampden and Vane and Oliver, in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, very far from the pure light in which walk the followers of the blessed Ludovick. At the last the two witnesses will speak against you also. But in the mean time it were easier for the children of light to walk under the rule of the Puritan than under that of the lascivious house of Jeroboam which now afflicts England for her sins. But the Lord hath a controversy with them! An east wind shall come up, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the wilderness! They shall be moved from their places! They shall lick the dust like serpents, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth, and be utterly destroyed! Think you not as I do, friend?" he asked, turning suddenly upon Landless.
"I think," said Landless, "that you are talking that which, if overheard, might give you a deeper scar than any you bear."
"But who is to hear? the tobacco, the Lord in heaven, and you. The senseless plant will keep counsel, the Lord is not like to betray his servant, and as for you, friend—" he looked long and searchingly at Landless. "Despite the place you come from, I do not think you one to bring a man into trouble for being bold enough to say what you dare only think."
Landless returned the look. "No," he said quietly. "You need have no fear of me."
"I fear no one," said the other proudly.
Presently he craned his long body across the plant between them until his lips almost touched the ear of the younger man.
"Shall you try to escape?" he whispered.
A smile curled Landless's lip. "Very probably
