We must now return to the place and period at which our story commences.

Late in the evening of that day the father returned to his dwelling. All
within and around was silent and desolate. No trace of a living creature
was to be found throughout the house or grounds. His nearest neighbors
lived at a considerable distance, but to them he hastened, frantically
demanding tidings of his family.

As he aroused them from their slumbers, one and another joined him in
the search, and at length, at the house of one of them, was found the
servant-maid who had effected her escape. Her first place of refuge, she
said, had been a large brewing-tub in an outer kitchen, under which she
had, at the first alarm, secreted herself until the departure of the
Indians, who were evidently in haste, gave her an opportunity of fleeing
to a place of safety. She could give no tidings of her mistress and the
children, except that they had not been murdered in her sight or
hearing.

At length, having scoured the neighborhood without success, Mr. Lytle
remembered an old settler who lived alone, far up the valley. Thither he
and his friends immediately repaired, and from him they learned that,
being at work in his field just before sunset, he had seen a party of
strange Indians passing at a short distance from his cabin. As they
wound along the brow of the hill, he could perceive that they had
prisoners with them--a woman and a child. The woman he knew to be a
white, as she carried her infant in her arms, instead of upon her back,
after the manner of the savages.

Day had now begun to break, for the night had been passed in fruitless
searches, and the agonized father, after a consultation with his kind
friends and neighbors, accepted their offer to accompany him to Fort
Pitt to ask advice and assistance of the commandant and Indian Agent at
that place.

Proceeding down the valley, as they approached a hut which the night
before they had found apparently deserted, they were startled by
observing two children standing upon the high bank in front of it. The
delighted father recognized two of his missing flock, but no tidings
could they give him of their mother and the other lost ones. Their story
was simple and touching.

They were playing in the garden, when they were alarmed by seeing the
Indians enter the yard near the house. Unperceived by them, the brother,
who was but six years of age, helped his little sister over the fence
into a fie