A woman of the party had a good supply. She spread her apron on the ground, poured her powder into it, and going round from soldier to soldier, as they stood behind the trees, bade each who needed powder put down his hat, and poured a quantity upon it. Thus she went round the line of defense till her whole stock, and all she could obtain from others, was distributed. At last the savages gave way, and, pressed by their foes, were driven off the ground. The victorious whites returned to those for whose safety they had ventured into the wilderness. Inquiries were made as to who had been killed, and one, running up, cried, "Where is the woman that gave us the powder? I want to see her!" "Yes! yes!--let us see her!" responded another and another; "without her we should have been all lost!" The soldiers ran about among the women and children, looking for her and making inquiries. Others came in from the pursuit, one of whom, observing the commotion, asked the cause, and was told. "You are looking in the wrong place," he replied. "Is she killed? Ah, we were afraid of that!" exclaimed many voices. "Not when I saw her," answered the soldier. "When the Indians ran off; she was _on her knees in prayer_ at the root of yonder tree, and there I left her." There was a simultaneous rush to the tree--and there, to their great joy, they found the woman safe and still on her knees in prayer. Thinking not of herself, she received their applause without manifesting any other feeling than gratitude to Heaven for their great deliverance. An eminent divine whose childhood was passed upon our New England frontier, during the period of the Revolution, narrated to the writer many years since, the story of his mother's life while her husband was absent in the patriot army. Their small farm was on the sterile hill-side, and with the utmost pains, barely yielded sufficient for the wants of the lone wife and her three little ones. There was no house within five miles, and the whole region around was stripped of its male inhabitants, such was the patriotic ardor of the people. All the labors in providing for the household fell upon the mother. She planted and hoed the corn, milked the cow and tended the farm, at the same time not neglecting the inside duties of the household, feeding and clothing the children, nursing them when sick and instructing them in the rudiments of education. "I call to mind, though after the lapse of eighty years," said the venerable man, "the image of my mother as distinctly as of yesterday, and she moves before me as she did in my childhood's home among those bleak hills--cheerful and serene through all, though even with my young eyes I could see that a brooding sorrow rested upon her spirit. I remember the day when my father kissed my brothers and me, and told us to be good boys, and help mother while he was gone: I remember too, that look upon my mother's face as she watched him go down the road with his musket and knapsack.