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Farallone, of a sudden, jerked up his head from the broiling and answered my unspoken questions.

“A man,” he said, “who followed this brook could come in a few days to the river Maria Cleofas, and following that, to the town of that name, in a matter of ten days more. I tell you,” he went on, “because some day some of you may be going that voyage; no ill-found voyage either–spring-water and trout all the way to the river; and all the rest of the way river-water and trout; and at this season birds’ eggs in the reeds and a turtlelike terrapin, and Brodeia roots and wild onion, and young sassafras–a child could do it. Eat that….” he tossed me with his fingers a split, sputtering, piping hot trout….

We spent the rest of that day and the night following by the stream. Farallone was in a riotous good-humor, and the fear of him grew less in us until we felt at ease and could take an unmixed pleasure in the loafing.

Early the next morning he was astir, and began to prepare himself for further marching, but for the rest of us he said there would be one day more of rest.

“Who knows,” he said, “but this is Sunday?”

“Where are you going?” asked the bride politely.

“Me?” said Farallone, and he laughed. “I’m going house-hunting–not for a house, of course, but for a site. It’s not so easy to pick out just the place where you want to spend the balance of your days. The neighborhood’s easy, but the exact spot’s hard.” He spoke now directly to the bride, and as if her opinion was law to him. “There must be sun and shade, mustn’t there? Spring-water?–running water? A hill handy to take the view from? An easterly slope to be out of the trades? A big tree or two…. I’ll find ’em all before dark. I’ll be back by dark or at late moonrise, and you rest yourselves, because to-morrow or the next day we go at house-raising.”

Had he left us then and there, I think that we would have waited for him. He had us, so to speak, abjectly under his thumbs. His word had come to be our law, since it was but child’s play for him to enforce it. But it so happened that he now took a step which was to call into life and action that last vestige of manhood and independence that flickered in the groom and me. For suddenly, and not till after a moment of consideration, he took a step toward the bride, caught her around the waist, crushed her to his breast, and kissed her on the mouth.

But she must have bitten him, for the tender passion changed in him to an unmanly fury.

“You damned cat!” he cried; and he struck her heavily upon the face with his open palm. Not once only, but twice, three, four times, till she fell at his feet.

By that the groom and I, poor, helpless atoms, had made shift to grapple with him. I heard his giant laugh. I had one glimpse of the groom’s face rushing at mine–and then it was as if showers of stars fell about me. What little strength I had was loosened from my joints, and more than half-senseless I fell full length upon my back. Farallone had foiled our attack by the simple method of catching us by the hair and knocking our heads together.

I could hear his great mocking laugh resounding through the forest.

“Let him go,” I heard the groom moan.

The bride laughed. It was a very curious laugh. I could not make it out. There seemed to be no anger in it, and yet how, I wondered, could there be anything else?

IV

When distance had blotted from our ears the sound of Farallone’s laughter, and when we had humbled ourselves to the bride for allowing her to be maltreated, I told the groom what Farallone had said about a man who should follow the stream by which we were encamped.