rible hardships was due entirely to the
existence of the danger she most feared; that is, the reappearance of
the Indians. On the second morning, nearly famished and very weak,
Penelope was making her way slowly over the ground, endeavoring to find
something she could eat, or a little dew in the hollow of a leaf, that
she might drink, when suddenly there came out of the woods two tall
Indians, who, naturally enough, were much surprised to find a wounded
white woman there alone upon the seashore.

Penelope gave herself up as lost. There was nothing now for her to do
but to submit to her fate. It was a pity, she thought, that she had not
been slain with her husband.

But the Indians did not immediately rush at her with their tomahawks:
they stood and talked together, evidently about her, with their fierce
eyes continually fixed upon her. Then their conversation became more
animated, and it was soon plain that they were disputing. Of course, she
did not then know the cause of their difference of opinion; but she
found out afterwards that one of them was in favor of killing her upon
the spot, and the other, an older man than his companion, was more
mercifully inclined, and wished to carry her off as a prisoner to their
camp.

At last the older man got the better of the other one; and he, being
determined that the poor wounded woman should be taken care of, took her
up and put her on his shoulder, and marched away with her. That an
Indian should be able to perform a feat like this is not at all
surprising; for when one of them shoots a deer in the forest, though
many of those animals are heavier than Penelope was, he will put it on
his back and carry it through the forests, perhaps for miles, until he
reaches his camp. And so Penelope, as if she had been a deer wounded by
some other hunters, which these men had found, was carried to the Indian
camp.

There she was taken care of. Food and drink were given her. Her wounds
were dressed and treated after the Indian fashion. In due course of time
she recovered her health and strength, and there--living in a wigwam,
among the women and children of the village, pounding corn, cooking
food, carrying burdens as did the Indian women--she remained for some
time, not daring even to try to escape; for in that wild country there
was no place of safety to which it was possible for her to flee.

Although there was a good deal of bad feeling between the Indians and
the whites at that t