red men with whom, perhaps only the day before, they had
been trading buttons for venison and beans. They could not believe that
these apparently mild and easy-going fellows could really be the
terrible savages they tried to make themselves appear.

So Richard Stout and his companions went boldly out, guns in hand, to
meet the oncoming savages, and, calling a parley, they declared that
they had no intention of resting quietly, and allowing themselves and
families to be slaughtered and their houses burned. If the Indians, who
had so long been their good neighbors, were now determined to become
bloody enemies, they would find that they would have to do a good deal
of hard fighting before they could destroy the village of Middletown;
and, if they persisted in carrying on the bloody job they had
undertaken, a good many of them would be killed before that job was
finished.

Now, it had been very seldom that Indians who had started out to
massacre whites had met with people who acted like this; and these red
men in war paint thought it wise to consider what had been said to them.
A few of them may have had guns, but the majority were armed only with
bows and tomahawks; and these white men had guns and pistols, with
plenty of powder and ball. It would clearly be unsafe to fight them.

So, after discussing the matter among themselves and afterwards talking
it over with the whites, the Indians made up their minds, that, instead
of endeavoring to destroy the inhabitants of Middletown, they would
shake hands with them and make a treaty of peace. They then retired; and
on the following day a general conference was held, in which the whites
agreed to buy the lands on which they had built their town, and an
alliance was made for mutual protection and assistance. This compact was
faithfully observed as long as there were any Indians in the
neighborhood, and Middletown grew and flourished.

Among the citizens of the place there were none who grew and flourished
in a greater degree than the Stout family. Although Penelope bore upon
her body the scars of her wounds until the day of her death, it is
stated, upon good authority, that she lived to be one hundred and ten
years old; so that it is plain that her constitution was not injured by
the sufferings and hardships of the beginning of her life in New
Jersey.

Not only did the Stouts flourish in Middletown, but some of them went a
little southward, and helped to found the town of H