It is not my purpose to belittle myself. While looking up to our visitor as an elder and one well versed in such warfare as was before us, I knew full well I should not have acted a stupid part had I been alone. I might fail to hold my own against the savages; but death would not have been invited by my own folly. The door, as well as the window shutters, was loopholed, and here Kenton took his stand, stationing me at that side of the house nearest the knoll, from where we might naturally expect the enemy would come. My mother appeared before we had made all the arrangements for a fight, and at once set about supplying us with ammunition and food in order that we might not be forced to move from our posts in quest of either. Then she took up my father's rifle, which was leaning against the side of the hut nearest me, as if to show that it was her purpose to do whatsoever lay in her power toward the defense, whereupon Kenton shook his head disapprovingly, and might have made objection to being aided by a woman; but before he could open his lips to speak the painted fiends were upon us. With whoops and yells they rose up close under the walls of the cabin, where we might not be able to draw bead upon them, and at the same instant a volley of rifle shots rang out as three bullets came inside between the crevices of the logs. CHAPTER II. BESIEGED. This kind of warfare was new to me. Although living on the frontier so far from any other settlement, our cabin had never before been attacked by savages. My father was killed some distance away from home, and, judging from the signs nearabout the place where he had been tortured to death, it seemed certain that no more than three Indians had captured him. Most likely it was a party of hunters, who had not really come out for mischief, but seeing an opportunity to take the life of a white man seized upon it. If they had been on the warpath, then beyond a peradventure our cabin would have been attacked. To Simon Kenton, however, this sort of work was by no means new. He had been besieged many times, as we knew from the stories the young man told us a short time previous; but I ventured to say that never before had he been pitted against the painted foes with so small a force, and in a place where it was not probable any help could come. Our cabin was situated so far back from the river that those passing up or down the stream would not suspect a habitation was near at hand, and, unless well acquainted with the clearing, an hundred men might go back and forth, never thinking that a settler had ventured in this vicinity.