The meal was scarcely touched. Aunt Marcia put Bible and prayer-book
by the lamp and barred all the front shutters. When grandmamma had
read we knelt, but the prayer, was scarcely finished when Aunt Marcia
was up, crying: "The signal! Hear the signal!"

Out in the still night a high mournful note on a bamboo pipe was
answered by a conch, and presently the alarm was ringing from point to
point, from shells, pipes and horns, and now and then in the solemn
clangor of plantation bells. It came first from the south, then from
the east, swept around to the north, and answered from the western
cliffs, springing from hilltop to hilltop, long, fierce, exultant. We
stood listening and, I fear, pale. But by and by grandmamma took her
easy chair.

"I will spend the night here," she said.

Aunt Anna took a rocking-chair beside her. Aunt Marcia chose the sofa.
Aunt Marion spread a pallet for me, lay down at my side, and bade me
not fear but sleep. And I slept.

XXXI

(REVOLT AND RIOT)

Suddenly I was broad awake. Distant but approaching, I heard horses'
feet. They came from the direction of the fort. Aunt Marcia was
unbarring the shutters and fastening the inner jalousies so as to look
out unseen.

"It's nearly one o'clock," some one said, and I got up, wondering how
the world looked at such an hour. All hearkened to the nearing sound.

"Ah!" Aunt Marcia gladly cried, "the troopers!"

There were only some fifty of them. Slowly, in a fitful moonlight,
they dimly came, hoofs ringing on the narrow macadam, swords clanking,
and dark plumes nodding over set faces, while the distant war-signal
from shell, reed, and horn called before, around, and after them.

Still later came a knock at the door, and Mr. Kenyon was warily
readmitted. He explained the passing of the troopers. They had
hurried about the country for hours, assembling their families at
points easy to defend and then had come to the fort for ammunition and
orders; but the captain of the fort, refusing to admit them without the
governor's order, urged them to go to their homes.

"But," Mr. Kenyon had interposed, "a courier can reach the governor in
an hour and a half."

"One will be sent as soon as it is light," was the best answer that
could be got.

Our friend, much excited, went on to tell us that the town militia were
without ammunition also. He believed the fort's officers were
conniving with the revolt. Presently he left us, saying h