The night attack upon the stockade--“Not a shot, mind, till I fire, and then let them have it”--The Indians are repulsed but come again with firebrands--They set fire to a cabin--Hardy’s brave fight with the flames--“That was well done, son,--very well done”--The savages are beaten off after fierce fighting--A renegade negro snipes the settlers from a tree-top--Boone puts a bullet through his brain at long range--The Indians attempt to undermine the fort--The scheme is frustrated and they raise the siege--Boone goes after his family. Fortunately for the brave hearts at Boonesborough, the summer nights afforded but brief cover of darkness. In fact, at the time of the siege a bright moon shone during the early hours and only for a short space before dawn was it possible for a man to approach within thirty or forty yards of the palisades without detection. Nevertheless, serious determined night attacks by the entire Indian force could hardly have failed to overwhelm the little garrison in time. During that dangerous period Boone required every man to be alert at his post. At other times of the night sentries were placed, but those off immediate duty slept with their rifles ready to the hand and within a few feet of the port-holes they were required to command. Boone never closed his eyes between suns whilst the siege lasted but passed his time on the lookout and in visiting his sentries. For rest he depended upon snatches of sleep in the daytime when favorable opportunities occurred. Very few hours sufficed to recuperate him after the hardest day. The night succeeding the fiasco of the treaty was wearing towards its close. It was the hour preceding dawn, when all nature seems to be silently crouching for the spring into the life of a new day. Boone stood at the port-hole of the upper story of one of the blockhouses, the cool breeze from the west fanning his brow. A sigh escaped him as he thought of the many lives that had been sacrificed for the possession of “the dark and bloody ground” of Kentucky, and the many more that would be demanded. For Boone was a fighter of necessity, not from choice. Action was the very spice of life to him and he loved the stress of conflict, as every strong man must, but he found no pleasure in bloodshed. Boone killed as a measure of self-preservation and for the protection of others. Although he was moved as much as any man to sorrow and indignation at the thought of the women and children barbarously murdered or carried to a cruel captivity, he never allowed vengeful passion to sway him. And the stern, cool temper in which he met the foe made him the more terrible and dangerous antagonist. Such he looked now, his mind having passed on to the thought that, no matter what the cost, Kentucky must and should be held by the people who were willing to convert its wilderness into fair fields and rich pastures.