he pain from my little
wound, if ever I had felt horribly depressed, I did then.

"Mass' George hungly?" said a familiar voice; and there was Pomp's
contented face before me, as he came up hugging to him some slices of
bread.

"No," I said, ill-humouredly, "I can't eat; my leg hurts me so."

"Pomp can," he said; "and him hand hurt too. Missie Morgan want to see
Mass' George."

I took one of the pieces of bread Pomp gave me, and began to eat
mechanically as I walked across the enclosure by the various little
groups of settlers and their families, to where my father was busy with
the other officers superintending the construction of a barricade
outside the gate, so as to divide the Indians in case of an attack, and
force them to come up to the entrance one by one.

"Ah, my boy," said my father, quickly, "how is the leg?"

"Hurts," I said, in an ill-used tone.

"Naturally," he cried with a laugh. "There, don't be down-hearted about
a little pain. I came and had a look at you, but you were asleep.
There, do you see how we are getting ready for your Indian friends? We
hope to give them such a severe lesson that they will leave us alone in
future."

"Then you think they will attack us, father?" I said. "Some one just
now told me that all was quiet, and that the Indians had gone."

"That is the very reason why I think they will attack us, my boy, and
the sooner the better, George. It must come, and I should like them to
get their sharp lesson and go; for I want to hang this up for an
ornament or to turn it into a pruning-hook."

He touched his sword as he spoke, and turned to Morgan, who came up.

"How is she?"

"Doctor says she's very feverish, sir, but he thinks she is going on all
right."

"I am very, very sorry, Morgan," said my father, sadly. "I feel as if I
were to blame for bringing you people out to this wilderness."

"I teclare to cootness, sir," began Morgan, in a high-pitched Welsh
fashion; but he checked himself and smiled. "There, sir, don't you talk
like that. Wilderness? Why, it's a pleasure to do a bit of gardening
here. See what rich deep soil it is, and how the things rush up into
growth."

"Very poor consolation for your wife, Morgan," said my father, dryly.
"All that does not make her wound the more bearable."

"Bah! Nonsense, sir! She don't mind. Why, as she said to me just now,
she wouldn't have got a wound from an Indian's arrow if she had stopped
at home, but the knif