"Listen," said the boy, as a second note answered the first; "do you hear that?" "Yes," replied his sister, and after a few moments' silence, "do you not hear a rustling among the branches of the tree yonder?" "Perhaps it is a squirrel--but look! what is that? Surely I saw something red among the branches. It looked like a fawn popping up its head." At this moment, the children, who had been gazing so intently in the direction of the fallen tree that all other objects were forgotten, felt themselves seized from behind and pinioned in an iron grasp. What was their horror and dismay to find themselves in the arms of savages, whose terrific countenances and gestures plainly showed them to be enemies! They made signs to the children to be silent, on pain of death, and hurried them off, half dead with terror, in a direction leading from their home. After traveling some distance in profound silence, their captors somewhat relaxed their severity, and as night approached the party halted, adopting the usual precautions to secure themselves against a surprise. Torn from their beloved home and parents, in an agony of uncertainty and terror, and anticipating all the horrors with which the rumors of the times had invested captivity among the Indians--perhaps even torture and death--the poor children could no longer restrain their grief, but gave vent to sobs and lamentations. Their distress appeared to excite the compassion of one of the party, a man of mild aspect, who approached and endeavored to soothe them. He spread them a couch of the long grass which grew near the camping place, offered them a portion of his own stock of dried meat and parched corn, and made them understand by signs that no further evil was intended. These kindly demonstrations were interrupted by the arrival of another party of Indians, bringing with them the mother of the little prisoners, with her youngest child, an infant three months old. It had so happened that early in the day the father of the family, with his serving men, had gone to a "raising" a few miles distant, and the house had thus been left without a defender. The long period of tranquillity they had enjoyed, free from all molestation or even alarm from the savages, had thrown the settlers quite off their guard, and they had recently laid aside some of the caution they had formerly deemed necessary. By lying in wait, the Indians had found a favorable moment for seizing the defenseless family and making them prisoners. Judging from their paint and other marks by which the early settlers learned to distinguish the various tribes, Mrs. Lytle conjectured that the savages into whose hands she and her children had fallen were Senecas. Nor was she mistaken. They were a party of that tribe who had descended from their village with the intention of falling upon some isolated band of their enemies, the Delawares, but failing in this, they had made themselves amends by capturing a few white settlers.