"Audrey," said Haward, "come here, child."

The blood returned to her heart, her vision cleared, and her arm fell from
its clasp upon the tree. The bark opened not; the hamadryad had lost the
spell. When at his repeated command she crossed to him, she went as the
trusting, dumbly loving, dumbly grateful child whose life he had saved,
and whose comforter, protector, and guardian he had been. When he took her
hands in his she was glad to feel them there again, and she had no blushes
ready when he kissed her upon the forehead. It was sweet to her who
hungered for affection, who long ago had set his image up, loving him
purely as a sovereign spirit or as a dear and great elder brother, to hear
him call her again "little maid;" tell her that she had not changed save
in height; ask her if she remembered this or that adventure, what time
they had strayed in the woods together. Remember! When at last, beneath
his admirable management, the wonder and the shyness melted away, and she
found her tongue, memories came in a torrent. The hilltop, the deep woods
and the giant trees, the house he had built for her out of stones and
moss, the grapes they had gathered, the fish they had caught, the
thunderstorm when he had snatched her out of the path of a stricken and
falling pine, an alarm of Indians, an alarm of wolves, finally the first
faint sounds of the returning expedition, the distant trumpet note, the
nearer approach, the bursting again into the valley of the Governor and
his party, the journey from that loved spot to Williamsburgh,--all sights
and sounds, thoughts and emotions, of that time, fast held through lonely
years, came at her call, and passed again in procession before them.
Haward, first amazed, then touched, reached at length the conclusion that
the years of her residence beneath the minister's roof could not have been
happy; that she must always have put from her with shuddering and horror
the memory of the night which orphaned her; but that she had passionately