In Lawrence, darker, and darker yet, the storm was lowering. Autumn was coming on with heavy dews, and cold winds from the mountains swept across the open prairie, whistling through the loopholes of the fragile cabins, as they went. The dampness and the chill brought with them that dreadful demon of the settler’s life, fever and ague. The arms of strong men were palsied by it, and the little children looked like blossoms blighted by a sudden frost. The active, generous-hearted Katie found time to run hither and thither with gruel and medicine, though her own little one was shivering, as if his joints would fall asunder. Many a murmured blessing followed her footsteps from cabin to cabin, and many a grateful tear fell on her hand, from home-sick souls, sorrowful, even unto death. In the midst of this calamity, rumours of invasion by the Missourians increased daily. In John Bradford’s cabin all slept so lightly, that the slightest unusual sound startled them to instant wakefulness. The distant whoop of Indians on the prairie, and the howling of hungry wolves disturbed them not. They were in dread of a more infernal sound than these; the midnight yell of Border Ruffians. A few weeks after the departure of Alice, they were waked from uneasy slumbers by that frightful noise, at the very walls of their cabin. Katie rose hastily, and laying her sick child on the floor, covered him with a thick cotton comfortable; hoping that the rifle-balls, if they whizzed through the cabin, would either fly over him, or lose their force in the wadding. There was a random shot, but the ball stuck in the boards at their bed’s head. The next moment the door was burst open by twenty or thirty fierce-looking men, armed with bowie-knives and revolvers. Never, out of the infernal pit, was heard such a volley of blasphemy and obscenity, as poured from their foul mouths. The purport of it all was that they had sworn to “wipe out Lawrence;” and that they had come to shoot this “damned Yankee abolitionist,” who had had the impudence to write in the paper that Kansas would yet be a Free State. They attempted to seize Mr. Bradford, but his wife threw herself across him, and said, “If you murder him, it shall be through my heart’s blood.” They struck her with their fists, they tried to pull her away; but she clung with a convulsive power that was too strong for them. Her brother, Thomas, was out that night, watching with a neighbour who was “down” with fever and ague; and it had been previously arranged that young Flora and her mother should remain hidden in the loft, in case of such an emergency. No screams ascended to their ears, for Katie had outgrown a woman’s weakness. But the listening mother heard the scuffle below, and, bidding Flora to hide in the darkest corner, she hastened down the ladder, and threw her arms round John and Katie, saying, “You shall kill _me_ first.” They cursed her, and spit at her, and, knocking