wrought, bringing into our wild business a breath of the orderly
comfort of home. I had seen her in silk and lace, a queen among the
gallants, but she never looked so fair as on that misty morning, her
hair straying over her brow, her plain kirtle soiled and sodden, but
her eyes bright with her young courage.

During the last hours of that dark vigil my mind had been torn with
cares. If we escaped the perils of the night, I asked myself, what
then? Here were the seven of us, pinned in a hill-fort, with no help
within fifty miles, and one of the seven was a woman! I judged that the
Indian force was large, and there was always the mighty army waiting
farther south in that shelf of the hills. If they sought to take us, it
must be a matter of a day or two at the most till they succeeded. If
they only played with us--which is the cruel Indian way--we might
resist a little, but starvation would beat us down. Where were we to
get food, with the forests full of our subtle enemies? To sit still
would mean to wait upon death, and the waiting would not be long.

There was the chance, to be sure, that the Indians would be drawn off
in the advance towards the east. But here came in a worse anxiety. I
had come to get news to warn the Tidewater. That news I had got. The
mighty gathering which Shalah's eyes and mine had beheld in that upland
glen was the peril we had foreseen. What good were easy victories over
raiding Cherokees when this deadly host waited on the leash? I had no
doubt that the Cherokees were now broken. Stafford county would be full
of Nicholson's militia, and Lawrence's strong hand lay on the line of
the Borders. But what availed it? While Virginia was flattering herself
that she had repelled the savages, and the Rappahannock men were
notching their muskets with the tale of the dead, a wave was gathering
to sweep down the Pamunkey or the James, and break on the walls of