When he had come to the end of the stanza he half rose, and turned toward the mute and breathless figure leaning against the beech-tree.  For her the years had rolled back:  one moment she stood upon the doorstep of the cabin, and the air was filled with the trampling of horses, with quick laughter, whistling, singing, and the call of a trumpet; the next she ran, in night-time and in terror, between rows of rustling corn, felt again the clasp of her pursuer, heard at her ear the comfort of his voice.  A film came between her eyes and the man at whom she stared, and her heart grew cold.

“Audrey,” said Haward, “come here, child.”

The blood returned to her heart, her vision cleared, and her arm fell from its clasp upon the tree.  The bark opened not; the hamadryad had lost the spell.  When at his repeated command she crossed to him, she went as the trusting, dumbly loving, dumbly grateful child whose life he had saved, and whose comforter, protector, and guardian he had been.  When he took her hands in his she was glad to feel them there again, and she had no blushes ready when he kissed her upon the forehead.  It was sweet to her who hungered for affection, who long ago had set his image up, loving him purely as a sovereign spirit or as a dear and great elder brother, to hear him call her again “little maid;” tell her that she had not changed save in height; ask her if she remembered this or that adventure, what time they had strayed in the woods together.  Remember!  When at last, beneath his admirable management, the wonder and the shyness melted away, and she found her tongue, memories came in a torrent.  The hilltop, the deep woods and the giant trees, the house he had built for her out of stones and moss, the grapes they had gathered, the fish they had caught, the thunderstorm when he had snatched her out of the path of a stricken and falling pine, an alarm of Indians, an alarm of wolves, finally the first faint sounds of the returning expedition, the distant trumpet note, the nearer approach, the bursting again into the valley of the Governor and his party, the journey from that loved spot to Williamsburgh,—­all sights and sounds, thoughts and emotions, of that time, fast held through lonely years, came at her call, and passed again in procession before them.  Haward, first amazed, then touched, reached at length the conclusion that the years of her residence beneath the minister’s roof could not have been happy; that she must always have put from her with shuddering and horror the memory of the night which orphaned her; but that she had passionately nursed, cherished, and loved all that she had of sweet and dear, and that this all was the memory of her childhood in the valley, and of that brief season when he had been her savior, protector, friend, and playmate.  He learned also—­for she was too simple and too glad either to withhold the information or to know that she had given it—­that in her girlish and innocent imaginings she had made of him a fairy knight, clothing him in a panoply of power, mercy, and tenderness, and setting him on high, so high that his very heel was above the heads of the mortals within her ken.