“How can I, Euan?”

We stood silent, thinking.  Presently my eyes fell on the rough ladder leading to the loft above.  She followed my gaze, hesitated, shot a keen and almost hostile glance at me, softened and coloured, then stole across the room to the ladder’s foot.

I lifted the lantern, followed her, and mounted, lighting the way for her along low-hanging eaves among the rustling husks.  She dropped the trap-door silently, above the ladder, took the lantern from my hand, set it on the floor, and seated herself beside it on the husks, her cheeks still brightly flushed.

“Is this then your intimate abode?” I asked, half-smiling.

“Could I desire a snugger one?” she answered gaily.  “Here is both warmth and shelter; and a clean bed of husks; and if I am lonely, there be friendly little mice to bear me company o’ nights.  And here my mice and I lie close and listen to the owls.”

“And you were reared in comfort!” I said with sudden bitterness.

She looked up quickly, then, shrugging her shoulders: 

“There is still some comfort for those who can remember their brief day of ease—­ none for those who never knew it.  I have had days of comfort.”

“What age are you, Lois?”

“Twenty, I think.”

“Scarce that!” I insisted.

“Do I not seem so?” she asked, smiling.

“Eighteen at most—­ save for the—­ sadness—­ in your eyes that now and then surprises me—­ if it be sadness that I read there.”

“Perhaps it is the wisdom I have learned—­ a knowledge that means sadness, Euan.  Do my eyes betray it, then, so plainly?”

“Sometimes,” I said, A faint sound from below arrested our attention.

Lois whispered: 

“It is Mrs. Rannock weeping.  She often weeps like that at night.  And so would I, Euan, had I beheld the horrors which this poor thing was born to look upon—­ God comfort her!  Have you never heard how the destructives slew her husband, her baby, and her little sister eight years old?  The baby lay in its cradle smiling up at its murderers.  Even the cruel Senecas turned aside, forbearing to harm it.  But one of Walter Butler’s painted Tories spies it and bawls out:  ’This also will grow to be a rebel!’ And with that he speared the little smiling creature on his bayonet, tossed it, and caught it—­ Oh, Euan—­ Euan!” Shuddering, she flung her arm across her face as though to shut out the vision.

“That villainy,” said I, “was done by Newberry or Chrysler, if I remember.  And Newberry we caught and hung before we went to Westchester.  I saw him hang with that wretched Lieutenant Hare.  God! how we cheered by regiments marching back to camp!”

Through the intense stillness I could still hear the woman sobbing in the dark below.

“Lois—­ little Lois,” I whispered, touching her trembling arm with a hand quite as unsteady.

She dropped her arm from her face, looking up at me with eyes widened still in horror.