n the
fields, and nobody was left in the place but two soldiers, two boys, an
old man of eighty, and a number of women and children. The commandant
was on duty at Quebec; his wife was at Montreal; and their daughter,
Madeline, fourteen years of age, was at the landing-place not far from
the gate of the fort, with a man-servant.

Suddenly she heard firing from the direction where the settlers were at
work, and an instant after the servant called out: "Run, miss!--run!
here come the Indians!" She turned and saw forty or fifty of them at the
distance of a pistol-shot. She ran to the fort as quickly as possible,
while the bullets whistled about her ears, and made the time seem very
long. As soon as she was near enough to be heard, she cried out: "To
arms!--to arms!" hoping that somebody would come out and help her; but
it was of no use. The two soldiers in the fort were so scared that they
had hidden in the block-house.

When she had seen certain breaches in the palisade stopped, she went to
the block-house, where the ammunition was kept; and there she found the
two soldiers, one hiding in a corner, and the other with a lighted match
in his hand.

"What are you going to do with that match?" she asked. He answered:
"Light the powder and blow us all up." "You are a miserable coward!"
said she. "Go out of this place." She then threw off her bonnet, put on
a hat, and taking a gun in her hand she said to her two brothers: "Let
us fight to the death. We are fighting for our country and our
religion."

The boys, who were ten and twelve years old, aided by the soldiers, whom
her words had inspired with some little courage, began to fire from the
loop-holes on the Indians, who, ignorant of the weakness of the
garrison, showed their usual reluctance to attack a fortified place, and
occupied themselves with chasing and butchering the people in the
neighbouring fields. Madeline ordered a cannon to be fired, partly to
deter the enemy from an assault, and partly to warn some of the soldiers
who were hunting at a distance.

A canoe was presently seen approaching the landing-place. In it was a
settler named Fontaine, trying to reach the fort with his family. The
Indians were still near; and Madeline feared that the new-comers would
be killed, if something were not done to aid them. Distrusting the
soldiers, she herself went alone to the landing-place.

"I thought," she said, in her account of the affair, "that the savages
would sup