t Paul grasped her by the
arm and drew her back.

"Go into your house!" he cried. "A bullet might reach you here!"

Obedient to his duty he hastened to the palisade to bear a valiant hand
in the defense, and she, retreating a little, remained in the shadow of
the houses that she might see how events would go. After the first shock
of horror and surprise she was not greatly afraid, and she was conscious
too of a certain feeling of relief. Henry Ware had told the truth, he
knew of what he spoke when he brought his warning, and he had greatly
served his own.

CHAPTER XV

THE SIEGE

It was not Lucy Upton alone who felt relief when the attack upon the
stockade came, hideous and terrifying though it might be; the suspense
so destructive of nerves and so hard to endure was at an end, and the
men rushed gladly to meet the attack, while the women with almost equal
joy reloaded empty rifles with the precious powder made from the cave
dust and passed them to the brave defenders. The children, too small to
take a part, cowered in the houses and listened to the sounds of battle,
the lashing of the rifle fire, the fierce cry of the savages in the
forest, and the answering defiance of the white men. Amid such scenes a
great state was founded and who can wonder that its defenders learned to
prize bravery first of all things?

The attack was in accordance with the savage nature, a dash, irregular
volleys, shots from ambush, an endeavor to pick off the settlers,
whenever a head was shown, but no direct attempt to storm the palisade,
for which the Indian is unfitted. A bullet would not reach from the
forest, but from little hillocks and slight ridges in the open where a
brown breast was pressed close to the earth came the flash of rifles,
some hidden by the dusk, but the flame showing in little points of fire
that quickly went out. The light of the moon failed somewhat, and the
savages in ambush were able to come nearer, but now and then a
sharpshooter behind the wall, firing at the flash of the concealed
rifle, would hear an answering death cry.

Lucy Upton behind the barricade with other girls and women was reloading
rifles and passing them to her father and Paul Cotter who stood in a
little wooden embrasure like a sally port. For a time the fire of battle
burned as fiercely in her veins as in those of any man, but after a
while she began to wonder what had become of Henry Ware, and presently
from some who passed she he