She entered the house and hurrying to the cradle, called out: 

“Little Rabbit, here I am.”

But when she bent over the side, behold! the cradle was empty.

She looked in every room, but found no sign of him.  Then she rushed to the door and called.  Three of the men came running, and they told her, speaking one on top of the other, how half an hour after she and their master had left one of them had gone to look at the child and found the cradle empty.  Since then they had been searching the place over, but with no success.

It was quite impossible for the child to have got away alone; yet who would take him away?  Indians or white folk, there was none in all Virginia who would dare injure the grandchild of Powhatan.

When she had listened to what they had to say, Pocahontas bade them go and continue their search.  When she was alone she sat down, not on the carven chair a carpenter had made her in Jamestown, but on the floor, as she had so often sat about the lodge fire when she wished to think hard.

After a long period of absolute silence and motionlessness she rose, took off her hat, gown and shoes and clothed herself in her Indian garments.  Now she knelt by the cradle and examined the floor carefully, then the sill of the door and the ground in front of it.  Something she must have discovered, for she sniffed the air eagerly like a hound that had found the scent.  She weighed her decision a moment—­should she turn in the direction of Powhata, where she knew Powhatan was staying, or should it be in the direction of Werowocomoco?  She turned towards the latter, and stooping every few minutes to examine the ground, proceeded quickly on her quest.

It was the slightest imprint here and there on the earth of a moccasined foot which was the clue.  Her brothers and sisters came to see her occasionally; but what purpose could one of them have in stealing her child?  No hostile Indians any longer, thanks to the fear Powhatan’s might and the English guns had spread among them, were ever seen in this part of the country; so while she hurried on she wondered whence this Indian kidnapper could have come.  That it was an Indian she was certain, and that he bore the child she knew, because lying on a rock in the trail she had found a piece of the chain of chinquapins she had amused herself stringing together to place about little Thomas’s neck.

Now that she was on the right trail it did not enter her mind to return to her husband’s men for help or to send a messenger to Jamestown to fetch him back.  She knew well that she was far better fitted than any white man to follow swiftly and surely the way her child had gone.  It might be, since the thief had several hours’ advantage, that it would be days before she could catch up with him; but if it took years and she had to journey to the end of the world she would not falter nor turn back for help.