She then went on to speak of the return of the boy's father, the building of the manor-house, the second marriage of Mr. Gilbert, and the exploits of his children. The peculiar temper of Oran soon determined the course of his life. While yet a boy of sixteen, he had extended his rambles over the mountains into the Wyoming valley, then occupied by two clans of Shawnee and Delaware Indians, who were often at feud together. "Among these barbarians," said the lady, "the young white Indian, for such he must be esteemed, fought his first battle, and took his first scalp. It was in the Grasshopper War"---- "The what?" cried Miss Falconer. "Why, Hal, the Grasshopper War _I_ call it," said Catherine, "out of tenderness to our sex; but all others call it the Squaw War. It was waged between those rival tribes I spoke of. The women of the two clans met together in a strawberry field, where they gathered fruit in company, very pacifically I doubt not, except a little scolding at one another. The children employed themselves, in the meanwhile, chasing grasshoppers; when, unfortunately, two boys belonging to different tribes pounced together upon a magnificent insect, that was perhaps the emperor of the field, and contended for the possession of the prize. Up ran the mother of the Delaware, and boxed the young Shawnee's ears; the Shawnee parent ran to avenge her child; and others immediately taking part, in a few moments the whole field was in an uproar: such scratching, scolding, and pulling of caps, were perhaps never heard of before. Out ran the men from their villages to help their wives, and to it they went pell-mell; and the war, thus begun, did not end until hundreds had been slain on both sides, and the Shawnees entirely driven from the valley. The less we say of this war, the better; for I heard it instanced as one small proof out of a thousand better, that men never fall by the ears, without the women being at the bottom of the contention. The Delawares, with whom Oran fought, made much of him, gave him a name which signifies the Boy Warrior, and formally adopted him into their tribe. As his brothers grew up around him, he enticed them one by one into the woods, and made them as wild as himself; and by and by, when those dreadful Indian wars, that followed after the defeat of General Braddock, extended over the whole western country, and even east of the Susquehanna, he acquired a singular reputation as a bold and successful scalp-hunter. I don't know what else to call him; he was not a soldier, for he never could be prevailed upon to go out with any body of soldiers, under the command of regular governmental officers. He went with his brothers, and seldom allowed even a neighbour to join his little party, though this was an object with all who knew him; for none of the Gilberts having ever been seriously wounded in any of their mad enterprises, the people had a