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.

"Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather."

Suddenly he found that he was trembling, and that a sensation of faintness
and of dull and sick revolt against all things under the stars was upon
him. Sitting down in the shadow of the tree, he rested his face in his
hands and shut his eyes, preferring the darkness within to that outer
night which hid not and cared not, which was so coldly at peace. He was
young, and though stories of such dismal things as that before him were
part of the stock in trade of every ancient, garrulous man or woman of his
acquaintance, they had been for him but tales; not horrible truths to
stare him in the face. He had seen his father die; but he had died, in his
bed, and like one who went to sleep.

The negro had followed him, and now stood with his eyes upon the dying
flames, muttering to himself some heathenish charm. When it was ended, he
looked about him uneasily for a time; then bent and plucked his master by
the sleeve. "We cyarn' do nothin' here, Marse Duke," he whispered. "An'
the wolves may get the horses."

With a laugh and a groa