l with emphasis. "Don't I know Henry Ware?
Weren't he and I lost together? Wasn't he the truest of comrades?"

Several men, talking in low tones, approached them. Braxton Wyatt was
with them and Lucy saw at once that it was a group of malcontents.

"It is nothing," said Seth Lowndes, a loud, arrogant man, the boaster of
the colony. "There are no Indians in these parts and I'm going out there
to prove it."

He stood in the center of a ray of moonlight, as he spoke, and it
lighted up his red sneering face. Lucy and Paul could see him plainly
and each felt a little shiver of aversion. But neither said anything
and, in truth, standing in the dark by themselves they were not noticed
by the others.

"I'm going outside," repeated Lowndes in a yet more noisy tone, "and if
I run across anything more than a deer I'll be mighty badly fooled!"

One or two uttered words of protest, but it seemed to Lucy that Braxton
Wyatt incited him to go on, joining him in words of contempt for the
alleged danger.

Lowndes reached the palisade and climbed upon it by means of the cross
pieces binding it together, and then he stood upon the topmost bar,
where his head and all his body, above the knees, rose clear of the
bulwark. He was outlined there sharply, a stout, puffy man, his face
redder than ever from the effect of climbing, and his eyes gleaming
triumphantly as, from his high perch, he looked toward the forest.

"I tell you there is not--" But the words were cut short, the gleam died
from his eyes, the red fled from his face, and he whitened suddenly with
terror. From the forest came a sharp report, echoing in the still night,
and the puffy man, throwing up his arms, fell from the palisade back
into the inclosure, dead before he touched the ground.

A fierce yell, the long ominous note of the war whoop burst from the
forest, and its sound, so full of menace and fury, was more terrible
than that of the rifle. Then came other shots, a rapid pattering volley,
and bullets struck with a low sighing sound against the upper walls of
the blockhouse. The long quavering cry, the Indian yell rose and died
again and in the black forest, still for aught else, it was weird and
unearthly.

Lucy stood like stone when the lifeless body of the boaster fell almost
at her feet, and all the color was gone from her face. The terrible cry
of the savages without was ringing in her ears, and it seemed to her,
for a few moments, that she could not move. Bu