For a time Harold was too moved to speak. The thought of his kind cousins and their brave girl all murdered by the Indians filled him with deep grief. At last he said:
"What makes you think so, Peter?"
"It's easy enough to see as it was after the harvest, for ye see the fields is all clear. And then there's long grass shooting up through the ashes. It would take a full month, p'r'aps six weeks, afore it would do that. Don't you think so, chief?"
The Seneca nodded.
"A moon," he said.
"Yes, about a month," replied Peter. "The grass grows quick after the rains."
"Do you think that it was a surprise, Peter?"
"No man can tell," the hunter answered. "If we had seen the place soon afterward we might have told. There would have been marks of blood. Or if the house had stood we could have told by the bullet-holes and the color of the splintered wood how it happened and how long back. As it is, not even the chief can give ye an idea."
"Not an attack," the Seneca said; "a surprise."
"How on arth do you know that, chief?" the hunter exclaimed in surprise, and he looked round in search of some sign which would have enabled the Seneca to have given so confident an opinion. "You must be a witch, surely."