king you," said Jolly Roger, "but I am just
down from the north, hoping to find my friends back here and I have seen
nothing but destruction and death. You are the first living soul I have
found to ask about them."

"Where were they?" grunted the man.

"At Cragg's Ridge."

"Then God help them," came the woman's voice from back in the room.

"Cragg's Ridge," said the man, "was a burning hell in the middle of the
night."

Jolly Roger's fingers dug into the wood at the edge of the door.

"You mean--"

"A lot of 'em died," said the man stolidly, as if eager to rid himself
of the one who had broken his sleep. "If it was Mooney, he's dead. An'
if it was Robson, or Jake the Swede, or the Adams family--they're dead,
too."

"But it wasn't," said Jolly Roger, his heart choking between fear and
hope. "It was Father John, the Missioner, and Nada Hawkins, who lived
with him--or with her foster-mother in the Hawkins' cabin."

The man shook his head, and turned down the wick of his lamp.

"I dunno about the girl, or the old witch who was her mother," he said,
"but the Missioner made it out safe, and went to the settlements."

"And no girl was with him?"

"No, there was no girl," came the woman's voice again, and Peter jerked
up his ears at the creaking of a bed. "Father John stopped here the
second day after the fire had passed, and he said he was gathering up
the bones of the dead. Nada Hawkins wasn't with him, and he didn't say
who had died and who hadn't. But I think--"

She stopped as the bearded man turned toward her.

"You think what?" demanded Jolly Roger, stepping half into the room.

"I think," said the woman, "that she died along with the others. Anyway,
Jed Hawkins' witch-woman was burned trying to make for the lake, and
little of her was left."

The man with the lamp made a movement as if to close the door.

"That's all we know," he growled.

"For God's sake--don't!" entreated Jolly Roger, barring the door with
his arm. "Surely there were some who escaped from Cragg's Ridge and
beyond!"

"Mebby a half, mebby less," said the man. "I tell you it burned like
hell, and the worst of it came in the middle of the night with a wind
behind it that blew a hurricane. We've twenty acres cleared here, with
the cabin in the center of it, an' it singed my beard and burned her
hair and scorched our hands, and my pigs died out there from the heat of
it. Mebby it's a place to sleep in for the night you want, stranger