whose charge she had made the voyage from England, sat close by.
"It is a beautiful New World," Jolie said in a low voice. "It is almost like Paradise. . . . We are going to find Gilbert. We shall not fail."
Yet, even as she spoke the words, her lips quivered and she marvelled at this gay courage of hers, recognizing it as a madcap thing that had no authority in reason or fact. There, beyond the blue waters of the bay, beyond the low roofs of the town, lay the wilderness—the illimitable forest of America, gigantic, formidable, unknown. Into its dim recesses had passed Gilbert Barradell, her lover, never to be heard from again. He had come, some fifteen months ago, to Charles Town in Carolina, a needy and adventurous gentleman in search of fortune; and after a little the wilderness had swallowed him, and none knew whether he was living or dead. And now she had come, a slip of a girl who knew somehow in her heart that Gilbert Barradell was still alive, to challenge the monstrous and mysterious power of that wilderness and win back the lover it had taken away.
Suddenly tears filled her eyes. It was as though steel-gauntleted fingers had tightened round her throat. For a moment Jolie saw in all its unutterable dreariness the failure of her quest. There was none to help her, none except Richard Barradell, Gilbert's brother, who had left reluctantly the frivolities of London—which to her had grown hateful—to accompany her on a voyage that he deemed hopeless from
