veralls were still, and stubbed toes did their last wriggling for
the day, that the boy who moved the trunk could not possibly see the
rest of the procession. The candidates, to a boy, rejected that specious
plea.

"What do I want to see anything for, if I can jest set inside that
elephant?" sobbed the Crane boy angrily. And under every roof the wail
was repeated in many keys.

Meantime, the log cabin had been going steadily up, and a week before
the great day, it was completed. This was a typical scene-setting,--the
cabin of a first settler,--and through one wild leap of fancy it became
suddenly and dramatically dignified.

"For the land's sake!" said aunt Lucindy, when she went by and saw it
standing, in modest worth, "ain't they goin' to _do_ anythin' with it?
Jest let it set there? Why under the sun don't they have a party of
Injuns tackle it?"

The woman who heard repeated the remark as a sample of aunt Lucindy's
desire to have everything "all of a whew;" but when it came to the ears
of a certain young man who had sat brooding, in silent emulation, over
the birth of the elephant, he rose, with fire in his eye, and went to
seek his mates. Indians there should be, and he, by right of first
desire, should become their leader. Thereupon, turkey feathers came into
great demand, and wattled fowl, once glorious, went drooping dejectedly
about, while maidens sat in doorways sewing wampum and leggings for
their favored swains. The first rehearsal of this aboriginal drama was
not an entire success, because the leader, being unimaginative though
faithful, decreed that faces should be blackened with burnt cork; and
the result was a tribe of the African race, greatly astonished at their
own appearance in the family mirror. Then the doctor suggested walnut
juice, and all went conformably again. But each man wanted to be an
Indian, and no one professed himself willing to suffer the attack.

"I'll stay in the cabin, if I can shoot, an' drop a redskin every time,"
said Dana Marden stubbornly; but no redskin would consent to be dropped,
and naturally no settler could yield. It would ill befit that glorious
day to see the log cabin taken; but, on the other hand, what loyal
citizen could allow himself to be defeated, even as a skulking redman,
at the very hour of Tiverton's triumph? For a time a peaceful solution
was promised by the doctor, who proposed that a party of settlers on
horseback should come to the rescue, just when a