"They've all gone off," he called out to me, "green-coats, red-coats and savages. I saw them an hour since crossing the river some three miles above. God! What a harm have they done us here on this accursed day!" He crept nearer and stood close beside me and looked down at the body of Douw Fonda. But in my overwhelming grief I no longer noticed him. "Why, sir," says he, "a devil out o' hell would have spared yonder good old man. But Sir John's people slew him. I saw him die. I saw the murder done with my own eyes." Startled from my agonized reflections, I turned and gazed at him, still stunned by the calamity which had crushed me. "I say I saw that old man die!" he repeated shrilly. "I saw them scalp him, too!" I summoned all my courage: "Did--did you know Penelope Grant?" "Aye." "Is--is she dead?" I whispered. "I think she is, sir. Listen, sir: I am Jan Myndert, Bouw-Meester to Douw Fonda. I saw Mistress Grant this morning. It was after sunrise and our servants and black slaves had been long a-stirring, and soupaan a-cooking, and none dreamed of any trouble. No, sir! Why--God help us all!--the black wenches were at their Monday washing, and the farm bell was ringing, and I was at the new barrack a-sorting out seed. "And the old gentleman, _he_ was up and dressed and supped his porridge along with me, sir; for he rose always with the sun, sir, feeble though he seemed. "I----" he passed a cinder-blackened hand across his hair; drew it away red and sticky; stood gazing at the stain with a stupid air until I could not endure his silence; and burst out: "Where did you last see Mistress Grant?" But my violence confused him, and it seemed difficult for him to speak when finally he found voice at all: "Sir--as I have told you, I had been sorting seeds for early planting, in the barracks," he said tremulously, "and I was walking, as I remember, toward the house, when, of a sudden, I heard musket-firing toward Johnstown, and not very far distant. "With that comes a sound of galloping and rattle o' wheels, and I see Barent Wemple standing up in his red-painted farm waggon, and whipping his fine colts, and a keg o' rum bouncing behind him in the waggon-box,--which rolled off as the horses reached the river--and galloped into it--them two colts, sir,--breast deep in the river! "Then I shouts down to him: 'Barent! Barent! Is it them red devils of Sir John? Or why be you in such a God-a'mighty hurry?' "But Barent he is too busy cutting his traces to notice me; and up onto one o' the colts he jumps and seizes t'other by the head, and away across the shoals, leaving his new red waggon there in the water, hub-deep. "Then I run to the house and I fall to shouting: 'Look out! Look out! Sir John is in the Valley!' And then I run to the house, where my gun stands, and where the black boys and wenches are all a-screeching and a-praying.