ver his shoulder,
and he came forward with swift, soundless steps.

The master recoiled in alarm at the strange and ominous figure, but as
the red flooded back into the girl's cheeks she put her hand upon his
arm.

"It is he! I knew that he was not dead!" she said in an intense
tremulous whisper. The words were indefinite, but the master knew whom
she meant, and there was a surge of joy in his heart, to be followed the
next moment by doubt and astonishment. It was Henry Ware who had come
back, but not the same Henry Ware.

Henry was beside them in a moment and he seized their hands, first the
hands of one and then of the other, calling them by name.

The master recovering from his momentary diffidence threw his arms
around his former pupil, welcomed him with many words, and wanted to
know where he had been so long.

"I shall tell you, but not now," replied Henry, "because there is no
time to spare; you are threatened by a great danger. The Shawnees are
coming with a thousand warriors and I have hastened ahead to warn you."

He hurried them inside the palisade, his manner tense, masterful and
convincing, and there he met his mother, whose joy, deep and grateful,
was expressed in few words after the stern Puritan code. The father and
the brother and sister came next, but the younger people like Lucy felt
a little fear of him, and his old comrade Paul Cotter scarcely knew him.

He told in a few words of his escape from a far Northwestern tribe, of
the coming of the Shawnees, and of the need to take every precaution for
defense.

"There is no time to spare," he said. "All must be called in at once."

A man with powerful lungs blew long on a cow's horn, those who were at
work in the fields and the forest hastened in, the gates were barred,
the best marksmen were sent to watch in the upper story of the
blockhouses and at the palisade, and the women began to mold bullets.

Henry Ware was the pervading spirit through all the preparations. He
knew everything and thought of everything, he told them the mode of
Indian attack and how they could best meet it, he compelled them to
strengthen the weak spots in the palisade, and he encouraged all those
who were faint of heart and apprehensive.

Lucy's slight fear of him remained, but with it now came admiration. She
saw that his was a soul fit to lead and command, the work that he was
about to do he loved, his eyes were alight with the fire of battle; a
certain joy was shi