It seemed that she had heard our voices when we came through the settlement, and only waited to make certain we were not pursuers. Leaving the children in the place of concealment, she had come out a few moments before, listening at the gate of the stockade until satisfying herself who was inside. Then returning, and taking the children with her, started for the fort just as John Butler’s butchers arrived. “It was well we decided to leave the cave,” Master Bartlett said as if speaking to himself. “Not yet twelve hours since we set out, and here are four lives saved. What may we not do later?” Then, in a louder tone, he added, turning to me, “Our work is cut for us, lad; it lies here and there among the ruins of the different settlements, rather than in any fortified place.” While he was speaking to me Mistress Stockbridge had been kissing and fondling her children as if after a long time of separation, and I could well understand she believed, in her ignorance, that after all the horrors of the past few days was she come unto deliverance, whereas she stood, perhaps, in more danger than while among the lye-casks under the ruins of her home. “Is there any good reason why we should stand here chattering like a party of old women?” Stephen Morley asked impatiently, and I, surprised at his tone, turned upon him with the question: “What would you have us do?” “Anything rather than remain here. Is it in your mind that those savages whom we sprang upon so suddenly are yet running? Even though there was nothing else to call them back, they would strive to save the scalps of their friends whom we have killed, as you should know from what has been done in the past. It is time we were making a move.” “True for you, Stephen Morley,” Master Bartlett said, heartily. “I was near to forgetting myself, in the joy of knowing we had been allowed to save this poor woman and her children from the knives of those fiends.” “But where are we to go?” I asked, helplessly, thus showing how little I knew concerning the work in which I embarked when joining the Minute Boys. “It matters little, so that we be not here when those whom we attacked return, as return they will very shortly.” Then it was that I bethought me now had come the time when no complaint could be made against the plan which Giles March and I had formed of carrying Elias Shendle to the cave, and I said, beginning to speak even as Giles himself came across the enclosure to learn the cause of the firing: “You can’t go far, or make any very desperate fight while Mistress Stockbridge and her children are of the party, neither am I willing that we desert Elias Shendle while he is unable to raise a hand in his own defence.” “Well, lad?” Master Bartlett said, impatiently, knowing most like I had some plan to propose.