The call being general, the women and children were all up also; many
of the former repairing to the loops, while the least resolute, or the
less experienced of their number, administered to the wants of the
young, or busied themselves with the concerns of the household. In a
word, the Hut, at that early hour, resembled a hive in activity, though
the different pursuits had not much affinity to the collection of
honey.

It is not to be supposed that Mrs. Willoughby and her daughters still
courted their pillows on an occasion like this. They rose with the
others, the grandmother and Beulah bestowing their first care on the
little Evert, as if _his_ life and safety were the considerations
uppermost in their thoughts. This seemed so natural, that Maud wondered
she too could not feel all this absorbing interest in the child, a
being so totally dependent on the affection of its friends and
relatives to provide for its wants and hazards, in an emergency like
the present.

"_We_ will see to the child, Maud," observed her mother, ten or
fifteen minutes after all were up and dressed. "Do you go to your
brother, who will be solitary, alone in his citadel. He may wish, too,
to send some message to his father. Go, then, dear girl, and help to
keep up poor Bob's spirits."

What a service for Maud! Still, she went, without hesitation or delay;
for the habits of her whole infancy were not to be totally overcome by
the natural and more engrossing sentiments of her later years. She
could not feel precisely the reserve and self-distrust with one she had
so long regarded as a brother, as might have been the case with a
stranger youth in whom she had begun to feel the interest she