If the girl were still alive, yet was she dead to him.  He was no Quixote to tilt with windmills.  Had a way to rescue her lain fair before him, he would have risked his life without a thought.  But the woods were deep and pathless, and only an Indian could find and keep a trail by night.  To challenge the wilderness; to strike blindly at the forest, now here, now there; to dare all, and know that it was hopeless daring,—­a madman might do this for love.  But it was only Haward’s fancy that had been touched, and if he lacked not courage, neither did he lack a certain cool good sense which divided for him the possible from that which was impossible, and therefore not to be undertaken.

Turning from the ruin, he walked across the trampled sward to the sugar-tree in whose shade, in the golden afternoon, he had sung to his companions and to a simple girl.  Idle and happy and far from harm had the valley seemed.

         “Here shall he see
          No enemy
    But winter and rough weather.”

Suddenly he found that he was trembling, and that a sensation of faintness and of dull and sick revolt against all things under the stars was upon him.  Sitting down in the shadow of the tree, he rested his face in his hands and shut his eyes, preferring the darkness within to that outer night which hid not and cared not, which was so coldly at peace.  He was young, and though stories of such dismal things as that before him were part of the stock in trade of every ancient, garrulous man or woman of his acquaintance, they had been for him but tales; not horrible truths to stare him in the face.  He had seen his father die; but he had died, in his bed, and like one who went to sleep.

The negro had followed him, and now stood with his eyes upon the dying flames, muttering to himself some heathenish charm.  When it was ended, he looked about him uneasily for a time; then bent and plucked his master by the sleeve.  “We cyarn’ do nothin’ here, Marse Duke,” he whispered.  “An’ the wolves may get the horses.”

With a laugh and a groan, the young man rose to his feet.  “That is true, Juba,” he said.  “It’s all over here,—­we were too late.  And it’s not a pleasant place to lie awake in, waiting for the morning.  We’ll go back to the hilltop.”

Leaving the tree, they struck across the grass and entered the strip of corn.  Something low and dark that had lain upon the ground started up before them, and ran down the narrow way between the stalks.  Haward made after it and caught it.

“Child!” he cried.  “Where are the others?”

The child had struggled for a moment, desperately if weakly, but at the sound of his voice she lay still in his grasp, with her eyes upon his face.  In the moonlight each could see the other quite plainly.  Raising her in his arms, Haward bore her to the brink of the stream, laved her face and chafed the small, cold hands.

“Now tell me, Audrey,” he said at last.  “Audrey is your name, isn’t it?  Cry, if you like, child, but try to tell me.”