“Wal, you see, Deliverance Scranton over to Sherburne, she's Col. Eph's daughter; and she used to hear her father tell about that, and she's told me time and agin about it. It was this way,--You see, there hedn't ben no alarm about Indians for some time, and folks hed got to feelin' kind o' easy, as folks will. When there don't nothin' happen for a good while, and it keeps a goin' on so, why, you think finally there won't nothin' happen; and so it was with Col. Eph and his wife. She told Deliverance that the day before she reely hed forgot all about that there was any Indians in the country; and she'd been out after spruce and wintergreen and hemlock, and got over her brass kettle to bile for beer; and the child'n they brought in lots o' wild grapes that they gathered out in the woods; and they said when they came home that they thought they see an Indian a lyin' all along squirmin' through the bushes, and peekin' out at 'em like a snake, but they wa'n't quite sure. Faith, the oldest gal, she was sure she see him quite plain; but 'Bijah (he was Col. Eph's oldest boy) he wa'n't so sure. “Anyway, they didn't think no more about it, and that night they hed prayers and went off to bed. “Arterwards, Col. Eph he said he remembered the passage o' Scriptur' he read that night; it was, 'The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.' He didn't notice it much when he read it; but he allers spoke of it arterwards as a remarkable providence that that 'are passage should have come jest so that night. “Wal, atween twelve and one o'clock they was waked up by the most awful screechin' that ever you heard, as if twenty thousand devils was upon 'em. Mis' Miller she was out o' bed in a minit, all standin'. 'O husband, husband, the Indians are on us!' says she; and sure enough they was. The children, 'Bijah and Faith come a runnin' in. 'O father, father! what shall we do?' “Col. Eph was a man that allers knew in a minit what to do, and he kep' quite cool. 'My dear,' says he to his wife, 'you take the children, and jest run with 'em right out the buttery-door through the high corn, and run as fast as you can over to your father Stebbins', and tell him to rouse the town; and Bije,' says he to the boy, 'you jest get into the belfry window, and ring the bell with all your might,' says he. 'And I 'll stay and fight 'em off till the folks come.' “All this while the Indians was a yellin' and screechin' and a wavin' fire-brands front of the house. Col. Eph he stood a lookin' through a hole in the shutter and a sightin' his gun while he was a talkin'. He see that they'd been a pilin' up a great pile o' dry wood agin the door. But the fust Indian that came up to put fire to't was shot right down while he was a speakin'.