Page 41 - A Hero of Ticonderoga

The children spent half the pleasant forenoon in alternate rounds of
housework and out-door play, now sweeping the floor with hemlock

brooms, now running out into the hazy October sunshine to play "Indians"
with Nathan’s bow and arrows and Martha’s rag doll. This was stolen and

carried into captivity, from which it was rescued by its heroic little mother.
Then they threw off their assumed characters and ran into the house to
replenish the smouldering fire, and to find that the sunshine, falling upon

the floor through the window, was creeping towards the "noon mark,"
making it time to begin dinner.

Nathan raised the heavy trap-door to the cellar and descended the ladder,
with butcher knife and pewter plate, to get the pork, but had barely got the

cover off the barrel when he was recalled to the upper world by a loud cry
from his sister:

"Nathan, Nathan, come here quick!"

He scrambled up the ladder and ran to her, where, just outside the door, she
was staring intently toward the creek.

"Who be them?" she asked anxiously, as she pointed at two figures just
disclosed above the rushes, as they moved swiftly up the narrow channel in

an unseen craft.

"I guess they’re Injins," said Nathan, after a moment’s scrutiny, "and I guess
they’re a-trappin’ mushrat. Let’s run over to the bank and see."

So they ran to the crown of the low bank, where they could command a
good view of the rushy level of the marsh, and the narrow belt of clear

water that wound through it, reflecting the hazy blue of the sky, the tops of
the scarlet water maples, the bronze and yellow weeds, and, here and there,
the rough dome of a newly built muskrat house. At each of these the two

men, now revealed in a birch canoe, halted for a little space, and then, tying
a knot in the nearest tuft of sedge, passed on to the next. There was no

mistaking the coppery hue of the faces, the straight black hair, though men
of another race might wear the dirty, white blanket coats, and as skilfully