ver again! At
first he wrote a letter to his mother every day, but a curt note came
from his father one day telling him that he must try to interest
himself in his surroundings and that it would be better if he wrote
only once a week! The weekly letter then became an event, and he
copied it over many times. Mrs. Corbett, busy with her work of feeding
the traveling public, often paused long enough in her work of peeling
the potatoes or rolling out pie-crust to wipe her hands hastily and
read the letter that he had written and pass judgment on it.

Feeling that all green Englishmen were their legitimate prey for
sport, the young bloods of the neighborhood, led by Pat Brennan, Mrs.
Corbett's nephew, began to tell Stanley strange and terrible stories
of Indians, and got him to send home for rifles and knives to defend
himself and the neighborhood from their traitorous raids, "which were
sure to be made on the settlements as soon as the cold weather came
and the Indians got hungry." He was warned that he must not speak to
Mrs. Corbett about this, for it is never wise to alarm the women. "We
will have trouble enough without having a lot of hysterical women on
our hands," said Pat.

After the weapons had come "The Exterminators" held a session behind
closed doors to see what was the best plan of attack, and decided that
they would not wait for the Indians to begin the trouble, but would
make war on them. They decided that they would beat the bushes for
Indians down in the river-bottom, while Stanley would sit at a certain
point of vantage in a clump of willows, and as the Indians ran past
him, he would pot them!

Stanley had consented to do this only after he had heard many tales of
Indian treachery and cruelty to the settlers and their families!

The plan was carried out and would no doubt have been successful, but
for the extreme scarcity of Indians in our valley.

All night long Stanley sat at his post, peering into the night, armed
to the teeth, shivering with the cold wind that blew through the
valley. His teeth chattered with fright sometimes, too, as the bushes
rustled behind him, and an inquisitive old cow who came nosing the
willows never knew how near death she had been. Meanwhile his
traitorous companions went home and slept soundly and sweetly in their
warm beds.

"And even after he found out that we were fooling him, he was not a
bit sore," said Pat. "He tried to laugh! That is what made me feel
cheap--he