nto it, and await
the attack of the Pequots. There was only a handful of the garrison,
while the Indians were many, and also barbarous. It was agreed that
they should be barbarous. And it was in this light that the great
question was settled whether a boy might snowball with balls that he
had soaked over night in water and let freeze. They were as hard as
cobble-stones, and if a boy should be hit in the head by one of them,
he could not tell whether he was a Pequot or an Early Settler. It
was considered as unfair to use these ice-balls in open fight, as it
is to use poisoned ammunition in real war. But as the whites were
protected by the fort, and the Indians were treacherous by nature, it
was decided that the latter might use the hard missiles.

The Pequots used to come swarming up the hill, with hideous
war-whoops, attacking the fort on all sides with great noise and a
shower of balls. The garrison replied with yells of defiance and
well-directed shots, hurling back the invaders when they attempted to
scale the walls. The Settlers had the advantage of position, but
they were sometimes overpowered by numbers, and would often have had
to surrender but for the ringing of the school-bell. The Pequots
were in great fear of the school-bell.

I do not remember that the whites ever hauled down their flag and
surrendered voluntarily; but once or twice the fort was carried by
storm and the garrison were massacred to a boy, and thrown out of the
fortress, having been first scalped. To take a boy's cap was to
scalp him, and after that he was dead, if he played fair. There were
a great many hard hits given and taken, but always cheerfully, for it
was in the cause of our early history. The history of Greece and
Rome was stuff compared to this. And we had many boys in our school
who could imitate the Indian war whoop enough better than they could
scan arma, virumque cano.

XII

THE LONELY FARMHOUSE

The winter evenings of the farmer-boy in New England used not to be
so gay as to tire him of the pleasures of life before he became of
age. A remote farmhouse, standing a little off the road, banked up
with sawdust and earth to keep the frost out of the cellar, blockaded
with snow, and flying a blue flag of smoke from its chimney, looks
like a besieged fort. On cold and stormy winter nights, to the
traveler wearily dragging along in his creaking sleigh, the light
from its windows suggests a house of refuge and the cheer of a