This plan thought out, he went; and took his seat beside the child.  She was moaning in her sleep, and he bent over and soothed her.  When she was quiet he still kept her hand in his, as he sat there waiting for the dawn.  He gave the child small thought.  Together he and Juba must care for her until they could rejoin the expedition:  then the Governor, who was so fond of children, might take her in hand, and give her for nurse old Dominick, who was as gentle as a woman.  Once at Germanna perhaps some scolding Hausfrau would take her, for the sake of the scrubbing and lifting to be gotten out of those small hands and that slender frame.  If not, she must on to Williamsburgh and the keeping of the vestry there.  The next Orphan Court would bind her to some master or mistress who might (or might not) be kind to her, and so there would be an end to the matter.

The day was breaking.  Moon and stars were gone, and the east was dull pink, like faded roses.  A ribbon of silver mist, marking the course of the stream below, drew itself like a serpent through the woods that were changing from gray to green.  The dank smell of early morning rose from the dew-drenched earth, and in the countless trees of the forest the birds began to sing.

A word or phrase which is as common and familiar as our hand may, in some one minute of time, take on a significance and present a face so keen and strange that it is as if we had never met it before.  An Orphan Court!  Again he said the words to himself, and then aloud.  No doubt the law did its best for the fatherless and motherless, for such waifs and strays as that which lay beside him.  When it bound out children, it was most emphatic that they should be fed and clothed and taught; not starved or beaten unduly, or let to grow up ignorant as negroes.  Sometimes the law was obeyed, sometimes not.

The roses in the east bloomed again, and the pink of their petals melted into the clear blue of the upper skies.  Because their beauty compelled him Haward looked at the heavens.  The Court of the Orphan!... When my father and my mother forsake, me, the Lord taketh me up.  Haward acknowledged with surprise that portions of the Psalter did somehow stick in the memory.

The face of the child was dark and thin, but the eyes were large and there was promise in the mouth.  It was a pity—­

He looked at her again, and suddenly resolved that he, Marmaduke Haward, would provide for her future.  When they met once more, he should tell the Governor and his brother adventurers as much; and if they chose to laugh, why, let them do so!  He would take the child to Williamsburgh with him, and get some woman to tend her until he could find kind and decent folk with whom to bestow her.  There were the new minister of Fair View parish and his wife,—­they might do.  He would give them two thousand pounds of sweet-scented a year for the child’s maintenance.  Oh, she should be well cared for!  He would—­if he thought of it—­send her gifts from London; and when she was grown, and asked in marriage, he would give her for dowry a hundred acres of land.