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.