and if the savages destroy it they may
as well destroy me also."

My mother said no other word. Our household was ever given to stern
silence, and such was my training that it did not occur to me to reflect
that if my father cared for his property it was not my property, and I
was entitled to care somewhat for my life.

Colonel Denison was true to the word which he had passed to me at the
Fort before the battle. He sent a messenger to my father, and this
messenger stood in the middle of our living-room and spake with a clear,
indifferent voice. "Colonel Denison bids me come here and say that John
Bennet is a wicked man, and the blood of his own children will be upon
his head." As usual, my father said nothing. After the messenger had
gone, he remained silent for hours in his chair by the fire, and this
stillness was so impressive to his family that even my mother walked on
tip-toe as she went about her work. After this long time my father said,
"Mary!"

Mother halted and looked at him. Father spoke slowly, and as if every
word was wrested from him with violent pangs. "Mary, you take the girls
and go to the Fort. I and Solomon and Andrew will go over the mountain
to Stroudsberg."

Immediately my mother called us all to set about packing such things as
could be taken to the Fort. And by nightfall we had seen them within its
pallisade, and my father, myself, and my little brother Andrew, who was
only eleven years old, were off over the hills on a long march to the
Delaware settlements. Father and I had our rifles, but we seldom dared
to fire them, because of the roving bands of Indians. We lived as well
as we could on blackberries and raspberries. For the most part, poor
little Andrew rode first on the back of my father and then on my back.
He was a good little man, and only cried when he would wake in the dead
of night very cold and very hungry. Then my father would wrap him in an
old grey coat that was so famous in the Wyoming country that there was
not even an Indian who did not know of it. But this act he did without
any direct display of tenderness, for the fear, I suppose, that he
would weaken little Andrew's growing manhood. Now, in these days of
safety, and even luxury, I often marvel at the iron spirit of the people
of my young days. My father, without his coat and no doubt very cold,
would then sometimes begin to pray to his God in the wilderness, but in
low voice, because of the Indians. It was July, but ev