les away. But not until that stern puritanical father should
arrive was leaving to be thought of. A week agone and the tidings of his
coming would have filled her with dread; now she heard them with relief.
Father coming--and Aunt Agnes! Aunt Agnes, who never before had been
west of the Hudson. Aunt Agnes, whose forebears had warred against
witchcraft and woodcraft, against village crones and forest children,
against helpless old women and stealthy young savages--all without mercy
when delivered into their hands! Was it in partial reparation for the
rapine, the swindling, and stealing dealt out by her Pilgrim forefathers
to the Indian of the East that Aunt Agnes had become the vehement
champion of the Indian of the West? President of a famous Peace Society
was she, and secretary of the Standish Branch of the Friends of the Red
Man, a race whom the original and redoubtable Miles had spitted and
skewered and shot without stint or discrimination. And now was Aunt
Agnes hastening westward with her brother, to reclaim their one ewe lamb
from the wolf pack of the wilds, and incidentally to see for herself
something of the haunts and habits of the red brother in whose behalf,
these last six months, her voice had been uplifted time and again. It
was the year of a great Indian war. The blood of hundreds of our
soldiery had been shed, without protest from these of Puritan stock, but
they shuddered at thought of reprisals. Aunt Agnes coming to Cushing!
Aunt Agnes to meet the colonel and his "red-handed horde of ruthless
slayers!"

No wonder the Christmas day that dawned for Miriam Arnold in that
stirring Centennial year bade fair to be the gloomiest of her life. Yet
who can tell what a day may bring forth?

Sumter came in, cheery and laughing, for the late family breakfast.
Guard-mounting was long over, but he had been detained by the colonel.

"It is almost comical," said he, "to see Button's delight in those
letters in the New York papers. He's as curious now to know the author
of those as he was furious at the supposed author of the others."

"What others?" faltered Miriam Arnold, her eyes filling with strange
apprehension, her face visibly paling.

"Some bitter attacks on him that appeared in the Boston and Philadelphia
papers about that night surprise of Lone Wolf's village--the one he
accused Mr. Lanier of having started."

"Accused--Mr. Lanier!" And Miriam Arnold, with consternation in her
voice, was half rising from