Sancho's despairing
cry, when Milo cast him out into the Grove, that brought the old woman
from her concealment in the forest. The awful plight of the unlucky
wretch had aroused in the woman's withered breast a demon of revenge
that knew no limits; and the departing schooner, then barely visible to
her, filled her brain with the knowledge that the strangers who came in
that vessel had been the indirect cause of her Sancho's fate.

She knew they had been placed in the cells behind the council hall; she
knew nothing of Dolores's last-minute decision that had taken them with
her. She knew nothing as to who or how many were left in the camp; but
she knew, she had terrible and ever-present proof in that moaning,
groping, brainless thing that was Sancho, that her mistress had shown a
leaning toward the strangers at the expense of her own people, and that
she herself might expect no mercy if ever caught. And with the low
animal cunning that served her for intellect she knew her penalty could
be no greater if she struck one blow in revenge before taking to the
woods in final flight.

Her plan was simple. Watching Sancho for a while, so that she might not
lose him, she searched for dry wood among the drenched underbrush, piled
it against the rear of the council hall, and set fire to it, fanning the
faint flame and feeding it, guarding it with her scanty garments, until
the red tongues shot up in a powerful, self-supporting conflagration.

Then she had darted back to the forest fringe, found Sancho, and turned
his sightless, blank face toward the blaze so that he might feel the
warmth and guess the cause. But she knew nothing of his cracked brain;
she knew only of his physical agonies; the utter absence of interest in
him when she would have shown him what she had done shook her to the
foundations of her own reason; and her eldritch scream pealed up among
the trees as she flung her arms aloft and cursed the place.

It was the scream that brought Pascherette out of the hut, where she
sheltered from the storm, to see the council hall in flames. It was the
scream that told the little octoroon where the fire had birth. And
Pascherette, too, believed that the three strangers were still within
the cells. She had plans of her own that required the safety of those
men, at least for a while. And her active brain gave her the solution
before the old woman had ceased to curse.

Like a small, sleek panther Pascherette ran toward the old