"Mother! mother! there is no time for rest. They were crowding in the outskirts of the woods when I came through. Come with me. I know of a cave in the rocks where you can be safe with my little sister. Did you know they will sell us for slaves--these white men that talk of a God higher than Mineto? Mother! mother! I hear a step. They are on us! They--" he paused suddenly, his hands, clasped and uplifted, seemed freezing together. He did not breathe. His wild eyes had caught the deadly pallor of that face, scattered as it were with ashes beneath the shadowy hair. He shuddered fearfully as the dead woman's garments rustled around her. A little form, half concealed by the chair, half buried in the garments, crept to his feet. A tiny hand, cold as snow, grasped at his dress. "Brother!" The little girl spoke in the Indian tongue, and looked into his face with those dark, piteous eyes. "Brother!" The boy snatched her up, and folding her close in his arms, looked in terrible woe on the dead face resting against the high back of the chair. "Oh, mother! mother! have they killed you as well as my father?" he cried, drooping toward her. "Will you never speak again? Oh, Mineto! Mineto! what has your people done, that they are chased to death like wolves and foxes? What had she done that they could not spare her?" Tituba stood motionless in the doorway. The wail of grief in that young voice held her there dumb and sorrowful. She understood the Indian tongue, and knew that this boy was the dead woman's son. A death-chant rose to her lips; she began to rock to and fro on the threshold. But a sound on the edge of the wood frightened the impulse away. She turned and saw a body of armed men coming around the meeting-house. The danger was close upon them. Tituba darted into the room, snatched the little girl from her brother's arms, and cried out in the Indian tongue: "Go! go! leap through the back window. There is a hollow floor under the oven: creep in. They will not look for you there." She ran into the kitchen as she spoke, mounted a ladder, and hid the child in a corner of the garret, heaping strings of dried apples and bunches of herbs upon her. The little girl lay in her concealment, passive and mute, holding her breath. Poor thing, she had become used to scenes of peril like that. But the lad, that brave Indian boy, scorned to flee for his own safety alone. There he stood, close to his dead mother, pale as death, but with a terrible fire in his eyes. He had not distinctly understood old Tituba, and only knew that danger was near. The heavy tramp of feet on the gravel path drew his eyes from that cold form to the window. It was blocked up with iron faces crowned with tall sugar-loaf hats, which shut out the very sight of heaven.