cy Upton went into her father's house, ate a little and then spreading
over herself a buffalo robe tried to sleep. Slumber was long in coming,
for the disturbed nerves refused to settle into peace, and the excited
brain brought back to her eyes distorted and overcolored visions of the
night's events. But youth and weariness had their way and she slept at
last, to find when she awakened that the dawn was coming in at the
window, and the east was ablaze with the splendid red and yellow light
of the sun.

"Are they still there?" was her first question when she went forth from
her father's house, and the reply was uncertain; they might or might not
be there; the leaders had not allowed anyone to go out to see, but the
number who believed that the savages were gone was growing; and also
grew the number who believed that Henry Ware was gone with them.

Even in the brilliant daylight that sharpened and defined everything as
with the etcher's point, they could see nothing save what had been
before the savages came. Their eyes reached now into the forest, but as
far as they ranged it was empty, there was no encampment, not a single
warrior passed through the undergrowth. It seemed that the grumblers
were right when they said the besieging army was gone.

Lucy Upton was walking toward the palisade where she saw Paul Cotter,
when she heard a distant report and Paul's fur cap, pierced by a bullet,
flew from his head to the earth. Paul himself stood in amaze, as if he
did not know what had happened, and he did not move until Lucy shouted
to him to drop to the ground. Then he crawled quickly away from the
exposed spot, although two or three more bullets struck about him.

The station thrilled once more with excitement, but the new danger was
of a kind that they did not know how to meet. It was evident that the
firing came from a high point, one commanding a view inside the walls,
and from marksmen located in such a manner the palisade offered no
shelter. Bullets were pattering among the houses, and in the open spaces
inclosed by the walls, two men were wounded already, and the threat had
become formidable.

Ross and Shif'less Sol, the best of the woodsmen, soon decided that the
shots came from a large tree at the edge of the forest northeast from
the stockade, and they were sure that at least a half-dozen warriors
were lying sheltered among its giant boughs, while they sent searching
bullets into the inclosure. There had been som