So the barricades were placed on the doors, and the women brought their chairs to sit and watch their very unwelcome prisoner. As the day grew old it occurred to the lady that perhaps the child was hungry. She prepared a piece of bread with molasses, and handed it out with the tongs. With this the child emulated his parents, for he painted his face from chin to eyes. This continued till the curtain lashes of the bright brown eyes came drooping down; his chubby little face, with molasses adornment, sank slowly to rest on the skirt. The women continued to watch. As the evening came on Miss Hobart paced the room impatiently. "Charles! Charles, my brother!" she would say, "why don't you come? You ought to know what a terrible, terrible trial it is!" But the sound of his knock on the door, when he came at his usual time, nearly made the women faint. A thin little man was Mr. Hobart, but sensible, and not to be alarmed. He declared that the morning would be time enough in which to clear the matter up. "Oh, but it won't," said his elderly sister. "Suppose there should be a night attack? They are very, very frequent--it's the Indian way of proceeding!" "Well," said he, "I'll go and tell the sheriff. He can hunt the parents up and settle the whole thing in a minute." "But," she protested, "the Indians are gone to their tents--campoodies--out in the sage-brush long before this--that is, providing they are not lurking around this neighborhood. And just fancy a poor mother deprived of her child all night!" "Well, what shall I do?" "Suppose--suppose you take a lantern and go out to the wigwams. You are not afraid?" "No, of course I'm not; but what's the use?" [Illustration] In the end he found himself muffled, mittened, provided with the lantern, packing the child--all wrapped in a blanket and fastened loosely in with a shawl-strap--out in the sage-brush, floundering aimlessly about in search of the Indian campoodies. Mile after mile he trudged about in the night, shifting baby and lantern from hand to hand as his arms grew weary, and growing more and more disgusted as it dawned on his mind that all he knew of the way to find campoodies was to wander toward the west in the brush, he shouldered the sleeping warrior and made some lively tracks for home. "There," said he, as he tossed the wee pappoose, blanket and all, on the lounge, "you can leave it to snooze where you please, for I am going right straight to bed." His sister sat in a chair all night, dressed, and she waked a hundred times from a dream of hideous Indian depredations. She was wearily sleeping when her brother ate his breakfast and went. An hour later the head of an old and silently whistling Indian appeared at the open window. [Illustration] "Ketchum pappoose?" said this awful warrior, and his voice was barely audible. She whirled around, saw the face, tried to scream, and failed.