separate buckskin bag over his heart, and mentally called them his
"kisses;" for the youths of those days were even such fools as now,
although in the lapse of time they have come to pose successfully in the
dignified guise of the "wise patriots of the pioneer period." More than
once when the station was attacked and the women loaded the guns of the
men to expedite the shooting, she kept stanchly at his elbow throughout
the thunderous conflict, and charged and primed the alternate rifles
which he fired.[1] Over the trigger, in fact, the fateful word was
spoken.

"Oh, Nan," he exclaimed, looking down at her while taking the weapon
from her hand in the vague dusk where she knelt beside him,--he stood on
the shelf that served as banquette to bring him within reach of the
loophole, placed so high in the hope that a chance shot entering might
range only among the rafters,--"How quick you are! How you help me!"

The thunderous crash of the double volley of the settlers firing twice,
by the aid of their feminine auxiliaries, to every volley of the
Indians, overwhelmed for the moment the tumult of the fiendish whoops in
the wild darkness outside, and then the fusillade of the return fire,
like leaden hail, rattled against the tough log walls of the station.

"Are you afraid, Nan?" he asked, as he received again the loaded weapon
from her hand.

"_Afraid?_--No!" exclaimed Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane--hardly taller
than the ramrod with which she was once more driving the charge home.

He saw her face, delicate and blonde, in the vivid white flare from the
rifle as he thrust it through the loophole and fired. "You think I can