By the time she was finished rebraiding her hair, the sunset had become twilight, and she decided she probably did have room for that biscuit after all. She unwrapped it carefully, bit into it, and discovered it had been halved and filled with strawberry preserves.

She ate every crumb and licked her fingers absolutely clean, then wrapped herself in the borrowed shawl and lay down, watching the hay-window. The hay was surprisingly soft to lie in, yielding and firm at the same time. And it smelled really good. She felt all of herself relaxing into the embrace of the hay, warm without being too warm. It was good to lie down after such a long day. She remembered just in time to say her prayers, adding Missus Sawyer to the list, but couldn’t manage to get to her knees to do so when she was so comfortable. More than in her bed at home, with the hard straw mattress.

And once again, things took a turn for the odd.

Something climbed in through the window. It was about the size of a raccoon—but it wasn’t a coon. It looked like a human being—only not a baby, but a miniature man, lean, muscular. She froze and held her breath, but all he did was perch on the ledge and look out over the yard. It was hard to tell in the light, but she thought that instead of a cloth shirt and trousers, he was wearing a leather shirt and leggings. His hair was definitely in two braids, like hers. Slowly it began to dawn on her. This was a miniature Indian!

At that point, she became convinced that she had somehow fallen asleep without realizing it. There was no reason why there should be an Indian lounging about in the window of the Sawyers’ hayloft—much less one the size of a doll. So she was surely dreaming. She tried opening her eyes, but they seemed to be open already, which could happen in dreams. So she tried closing them. That worked. At least she wasn’t seeing the tiny Indian anymore.

Given the blood-curdling tales Missus Sawyer had been reading, she was actually relieved that all she was dreaming about was a tiny Indian.

And the next thing she knew, the Sawyers’ rooster was crowing, practically in her ear, and she woke up with a start. The rooster, naughty thing, stood in the window where she’d seen the tiny Indian, looked her brazenly in the eye, and crowed at her again before flapping down into the yard to join his hens.

When she had combed and braided her hair again, and folded up the canvas and the shawl to carry with her down the ladder, she took a look herself out of the window to see if there were any signs of life at the house. Missus Sawyer, scattering grain for the hens in the thin morning light, must have caught movement in the window out of the corner of her eye, because she looked up and waved.