kitchen door and made a desperate attempt to smash it in. Mrs. Godfrey,
who had stood near the door for sometime, appeared calm and decided amid
all the murderous clamour. She stepped back a pace, and placing the butt
of the musket against her hip, with the muzzle slanting upwards, stood
firm as a statue.

The door was soon forced and the fiends came tumbling in. Mrs. Godfrey
fired, the charge going over the heads of the savages and entering the
ceiling above the door. The Indians in the rear seeing their comrades
fall, and thinking they were killed by the shot, at once retreated
uttering terrible threats of vengeance. One of the squaws, a short,
stout old creature, was so terrified by the report of the musket and the
falling to the floor of the three Indians, that in her bewildered
retreat she tumbled headlong down a steep, stony bank and laid as if
dead on the ice below. She was left by her companions, who travelled as
fast as their legs would carry them. The old squaw was found and taken
prisoner by Mrs. Godfrey. Her nose and one rib were broken, her left arm
dislocated at the elbow, and both her eyes completely closed with heavy
shutters. She presented a pitiable appearance, as she staggered along
toward the house supported by her captor. The Indians were so completely
surprised and cowed by the courage of Mrs. Godfrey that they never came
back to look after the wounded squaw, or sent to inquire whether she was
living or dead.

As soon as the old squaw began to recover, Mrs. Godfrey found out that
the old woman could speak some English. She said she was a widow about
sixty years old. That her husband had been killed at Fort Pitt in 1763.
Her only son had been taken prisoner by the English at Fort Pitt, and
had afterwards remained nine moons with an English officer in New York.
The officer went away to England and wanted her son to go with him, but
on the eve of the officer's departure he ran away, soon got on the trail
of his mother, and at last found her at Detroit living with a band of
Iroquois. Not long afterward she and her boy wandered from post to post
and camp to camp until they at last got over among the tribe on the St.
John, where they had made their home among a strange tribe for the past
two years. Her son did not respect the tribe with whom they lived. He
had often told her that these Indians were not pure bloods. Her son was
sixteen years old when taken prisoner at Fort Pitt. She had always been
call