When, two or three minutes later, an Abenakis darted out from his place of concealment, Mark raised his weapon quickly; but Susan cried, warningly: "Don't fire! It can do us no harm if they take away the wounded, and it's possible they'll go back to the harbor island, if the injured can be carried off!" "I'm beginning to think it is you who should be in command here," Mark said, half to himself, as he lowered his weapon. "You've got more sound sense than Luke and I together." Then, raising his voice, he cried, loudly, "Listen, ye Abenakis, whom our fathers have fed when you were hungry, and sheltered when you were cold, but who would murder us now! Take away your wounded, if you are minded to go back to the harbor island, and no one shall harm you while so doing. The white men of Mount Desert have never broken faith with you, nor will we, their children." Then was done that which proves how much stranger than fiction is truth. The Abenakis, although they had come there to kill or make prisoners the wives and children of those men who had ever been their friends, did not question the faith of the lad when he announced that they might bear off the wounded in safety, but boldly advanced within short range to the aid of their fellows. "Why do you seek to kill us, who have never done you harm?" Mark cried, when four of the band stood in full view while lifting the wounded from the ground. "Do Indians kill their friends? Do they speak soft words only while the men of the family are at home, being too cowardly to make an attack until the fathers have gone away?" There was no reply to this speech until the Indians were hidden once more by the bushes, and then a voice cried: "Give us the cow and two boys. Then we will go away, telling the Frenchmen that all have been killed." "You shall not have the smallest chicken inside this stockade!" Mark cried, angrily. "And I promise that there shall be few left to report to the cowardly Frenchmen, if you remain here very long. You shall be shot down like dogs, and from this out our squaws will not interfere to let you carry off those who have been crippled!" While speaking, Mark had unconsciously raised himself to his full height, instead of being partially sheltered by remaining in a crouching position, as during the short fight, and the reply to his words came in the form of bullets, one of which grazed his cheek, raising a red ridge, as if he had been scored by a whip-lash. Susan and Luke both fired in the direction from which had been seen the flash of the muskets, but no one could say if the missiles thus sent at random took effect.