nees before the window, and
raised her hands in pious acknowledgment to Heaven.

"Almighty God, I thank thee," she fervently exclaimed, her eye once
more lighting up, and her cheek half suffused with blushes at her late
vague and idle fears; while she embraced, at a single glance, the whole
of the gladdening and inspiriting scene.

While her soul was yet upturned whither her words had gone before, her
ears were again assailed by sounds that curdled her blood, and made her
spring to her feet as if stricken by a bullet through the heart; or
powerfully touched by some electric fluid. It was the well-known and
devilish war-cry of the savages, startling the very air through which
it passed, and falling like a deadly blight upon the spirit. With a
mechanical and desperate effort at courage, the unhappy girl turned her
eyes below, and there met images of death in their most appalling
shapes. Hurry and confusion and despair were every where visible; for a
band of Indians were already in the fort, and these, fast succeeded by
others, rushed like a torrent into the square, and commenced their
dreadful work of butchery. Many of the terrified soldiers, without
thinking of drawing their bayonets, flew down the ramparts in order to
gain their respective block-houses for their muskets: but these every
where met death from the crashing tomahawk, short rifle, or gleaming
knife;--others who had presence of mind sufficient to avail themselves
of their only weapons of defence, rushed down in the fury of
desperation on the yelling fiends, resolved to sell their lives as
dearly as possible; and for some minutes an obstinate contest was
maintained: but the vast superiority of the Indian numbers triumphed;
and although the men fought with all the fierceness of despair, forcing
their way to the block-houses, their mangled corpses strewed the area
in every direction. Neither was the horrid butchery confined to these.
Women clinging to their husbands for protection, and, in the
recklessness of their despair, impeding the efforts of the latter in
their self-defence--children screaming in terror, or supplicating mercy
on their bonded knees--infants clasped to their parents' breasts,--all
alike sunk under the unpitying steel of the blood-thirsty savages. At
the guard-house the principal stand had been made; for at the first
rush into the fort, the men on duty had gained their station, and,
having made fast the barricades, opened their fire upon the