Tired and hungry, the children could go no farther, and after an almost fruitless endeavor to get some milk from the cows, lay down to sleep under an old bedstead that stood behind the house. During the night their father and his party caused them additional terror. The shouts and calls which had been designed to arouse the inmates of the house the children mistook for the whoop of the Indians, and, unable to distinguish friends from foes, crept close to each other, as far out of sight as possible. When found the following morning, they were debating what course for safety to take next. The commandant at Fort Pitt entered warmly into the affairs of Mr. Lytle, and readily furnished a detachment of soldiers to aid him and his friends in the pursuit of the marauders. Circumstances having thrown suspicion upon the Senecas, the party soon directed their search among the villages of that tribe. Their inquiries were prosecuted in various directions, and always with great caution, for all the tribes of the Iroquois, or, as they pompously called themselves, the Five Nations, being allies of Great Britain, were inveterate in their hostility toward the Americans. Thus some time elapsed before the father with his assistants reached the village of the Big White Man. Negotiations for the ransom of the captives were immediately begun and in the case of Mrs. Lytle and the younger child easily carried into effect. But no offers, no entreaties, no promises could procure the release of little Eleanor, the adopted child of the tribe. No, the chief said, she was his sister; he had taken her to supply the place of his brother who was killed by the enemy; she was dear to him, and he would not part with her. Finding every effort to shake this resolution unavailing, the father was compelled to take his sorrowful departure with the loved ones he had had the good fortune to recover. We will not attempt to depict the grief of parents thus compelled to give up a darling child, leaving her in the hands of savages whom until now they had had too much reason to regard as merciless. But there was no alternative; so commending her to the care of their heavenly Father, and cheered by the manifest tenderness with which she had thus far been treated, they set out on their melancholy journey homeward, trusting that some future effort for her recovery would be more effectual. Having placed his family in safety in Pittsburgh, Mr. Lytle, still assisted by the commandant and the Indian Agent, undertook an expedition to the frontier to the residence of the British Agent, Colonel Johnson. His account of the case warmly interested that benevolent officer, who promised to spare no exertion in his behalf. This promise was religiously fulfilled. As soon as the opening of spring permitted, Colonel Johnson went in person to the village of the Big White Man, and offered the chief many splendid presents of guns and horses; but he was inexorable.