Audrey did not cry.  She was very, very tired, and she wanted to go to sleep.  “The Indians came,” she told him in a whisper, with her head upon his breast.  “We all waked up, and father fired at them through the hole in the door.  Then they broke the door down, and he went outside, and they killed him.  Mother put me under the bed, and told me to stay there, and to make no noise.  Then the Indians came in at the door, and killed her and Molly and Robin.  I don’t remember anything after that,—­maybe I went to sleep.  When I was awake again the Indians were gone, but there was fire and smoke everywhere.  I was afraid of the fire, and so I crept from under the bed, and kissed mother and Molly and Robin, and left them lying in the cabin, and came away.”

She sighed with weariness, and the hand with which she put back her dark hair that had fallen over her face was almost too heavy to lift.  “I sat beside father and watched the fire,” she said.  “And then I heard you and the black man coming over the stones in the stream.  I thought that you were Indians, and I went and hid in the corn.”

Her voice failed, and her eyelids drooped.  In some anxiety Haward watched her breathing and felt for the pulse in the slight brown wrist; then, satisfied, he lifted the light burden, and, nodding to the negro to go before, recommenced his progress to the hill which he had left an hour agone.

It was not far away.  He could see the bare summit above the treetops, and in a little while they were upon its slope.  A minute more and they came to the clump of trees, and found the horses in safety, Haward paused to take from the roll strapped behind his saddle a riding cloak; then, leaving the negro with the horses, climbed to the grassy level.  Here he spread the cloak upon the ground, and laid the sleeping child upon it, which done, he stood and looked at his new-found charge for a moment; then turning, began to pace up and down upon the hilltop.

It was necessary to decide upon a course of action.  They had the horses, the two muskets, powder and shot.  The earth was dry and warm, and the skies were cloudless.  Was it best to push on to Germanna, or was it best to wait down there in the valley for the return of the Governor and his party?  They would come that way, that was certain, and would look to find him there.  If they found only the ruined cabin, they might think him dead or taken by the Indians, and an attempt to seek him, as dangerous, perhaps, as fruitless, might be made.  He decided that he would wait.  To-morrow he would take Juba and the horses and the child and go down into the valley; not back to the sugar-tree and that yet smouldering pyre, but to the woods on this side of the stream.