“Every one,” replied Marston. “Jim Scraggs, who brought the news, said they wos all lyin’ dead with their scalps off. They wos a party o’ white men.”
Mrs Varley sighed again, and her face assumed an expression of anxious pain as she thought of her son Dick being exposed to a similar fate. Mrs Varley was not given to nervous fears; but as she listened to the boy’s recital of the slaughter of a party of white men, news of which had just reached the valley, her heart sank, and she prayed inwardly to Him who is the husband of the widow that her dear one might be protected from the ruthless hand of the savage.
After a short pause, during which young Marston fidgeted about and looked concerned, as if he had something to say which he would fain leave unsaid, Mrs Varley continued:—
“Was it far off where the bloody deed was done?”
“Yes; three weeks off, I believe. And Jim Scraggs said that he found a knife that looked like the one wot belonged to—to—” the lad hesitated.
“To whom, my boy? Why don’t ye go on?”
“To your son Dick.”
The widow’s hands dropped by her side, and she would have fallen had not Marston caught her.
“O mother dear, don’t take on like that!” he cried, smoothing down the widow’s hair as her head rested on his breast.
For some time Mrs Varley suffered the boy to fondle her in silence, while her breast laboured with anxious dread.