and stare at the ruin, until a tongue of flame caught upon a piece of
uncharred wood, and showed them the body of the pioneer lying at a little
distance from the stone that had formed his doorstep. At a sign from
Haward the negro went and turned it over, then, let it sink again into the
seared grass. "Two arrows, Marse Duke," he said, coming back to the
other's side. "An' they've taken his scalp."

Three times Haward made the round of the yet burning heap. Was it only
ruined and fallen walls, or was it a funeral pyre as well? To know, he
must wait for the day and until the fire had burned itself out. If the
former were the case, if the dead man alone kept the valley, then now,
through the forest and the moonlight, captives were being haled to some
Indian village, and to a fate more terrible than that of the man who lay
there upon the grass with an arrow through his heart.

If the girl were still alive, yet was she dead to him. He was no Quixote
to tilt with windmills. Had a way to rescue her lain fair before him, he
would have risked his life without a thought. But the woods were deep and
pathless, and only an Indian could find and keep a trail by night. To
challenge the wilderness; to strike blindly at the forest, now here, now
there; to dare all, and know that it was hopeless daring,--a madman might
do this for love. But it was only Haward's fancy that had been touched,
and if he lacked not courage, neither did he lack a certain cool good
sense which divided for him the possible from that which was impossible,
and therefore not to be undertaken.

Turning from the ruin, he walked across the trampled sward to the
sugar-tree in whose shade, in the golden afternoon, he had sung to his
companions and to a simple girl. Idle and happy and far from harm had the
valley seemed.