The negro had followed him, and now stood with his eyes upon the dying
flames, muttering to himself some heathenish charm. When it was ended, he
looked about him uneasily for a time; then bent and plucked his master by
the sleeve. "We cyarn' do nothin' here, Marse Duke," he whispered. "An'
the wolves may get the horses."
With a laugh and a groan, the young man rose to his feet. "That is true,
Juba," he said. "It's all over here,--we were too late. And it's not a
pleasant place to lie awake in, waiting for the morning. We'll go back to
the hilltop."
Leaving the tree, they struck across the grass and entered the strip of
corn. Something low and dark that had lain upon the ground started up
before them, and ran down the narrow way between the stalks. Haward made
after it and caught it.
"Child!" he cried. "Where are the others?"
The child had struggled for a moment, desperately if weakly, but at the
sound of his voice she lay still in his grasp, with her eyes upon his
face. In the moonlight each could see the other quite plainly. Raising her
in his arms, Haward bore her to the brink of the stream, laved her face
and chafed the small, cold hands.
"Now tell me, Audrey," he said at last. "Audrey is your name, isn't it?
Cry, if you like, child, but try to tell me."
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.