I was startled. To whom could she be speaking? I would have nobody about, now. I would show him, whoever he was! This grove was mine as long as I wanted to stay there with my girl. The blood rose to my head as I went quietly forward until I could see Virginia. She was alone! She had taken a blanket from the wagon and spread it on the ground upon the grass under a spreading elm, and scattered about on it were articles of clothing which she had taken from her satchel--that satchel to which the poor child had clung so tightly while she had come to my camp across the prairie on the Ridge Road that night--which now seemed so long ago. There was a dress on which she had been sewing; for the needle was stuck in the blanket with the thread still in the garment; but she was not working. She had in her lap as she sat cross-legged on the blanket, a little wax doll to which she was babbling and talking as little girls do. She had taken off its dress, and was carefully wiping its face, telling it to shut its eyes, saying that mama wouldn't hurt it, asking it if she wasn't a bad mama to keep it shut up all the time in that dark satchel, asking it if it wasn't afraid in the dark, assuring it that mama wouldn't let anybody hurt it--and all this in the sweetest sort of baby-talk. And then she put its dress on, gently smoothed its hair, held it for a while against her bosom as she swayed from side to side telling it to go to sleep, hummed gently a cradle song, and put it back in the satchel as a mother might put her sleeping baby in its cradle. I crept silently away. It was dark when I returned to camp, and she had supper ready and was anxiously awaiting me. She ran to me and took my hand affectionately. "What kept you so long?" she asked earnestly. "I have been anxious. I thought something must have happened to you!" And as we approached the fire, she looked in my face, and cried out in astonishment. "Something has happened to you. You are as white as a sheet. What is it? Are you sick? What shall I do if you get sick!" "No," I said, "I am not sick. I am all right--now." "But something has happened," she insisted. "You are weak as well as pale. Let me do something for you. What was it?" "A snake," I said, for an excuse. "A rattlesnake. It struck at me and missed. It almost struck me. I'll be all right now." The longer I live the surer I am that I told her very nearly the truth. That night we sat up late and talked. She was only a dear little child, now, with a bit of the mother in her. She was really affectionate to me, more so than ever before, and sometimes I turned cold as I thought of how her affection might have been twisted into deviltry had it not been so strangely brought home to me that she was a child, with a good deal of the mother in her. I turned cold as I thought of her playing with her doll while I had been out on the prairie laying poison plots against her innocence, her defenselessness, her trust in me.