that were to cast the
rocks on the assailants, the smaller were to be used more for show than any
positive service they could perform, while, like any other leader, she reserved
her own person, as a superintendant, and encourager of the whole. When these
dispositions were made, she endeavored to await the issue, with an air of
composure that she intended should inspire her assistants with the confidence
necessary to insure success.
    Although Ellen was vastly their superior in that spirit which emanates from
moral qualities, she was by no means the equal of the two eldest daughters of
Esther in the important military property, of insensibility to danger. Reared in
the hardihood of a migrating life, on the skirts of society, where they had
become familiarised to the sights and dangers of the wilderness, these girls,
promised fairly, to become at some future day no less distinguished than their
mother, for daring and for that singular mixture of good and evil, which in a
wider sphere of action, would probably have enabled the wife of the squatter to
enroll her name, among the remarkable females of her time. Esther had already,
on one occasion, made good the log tenement of Ishmael, against an inroad of
savages, and on another, she had been left for dead, by her enemies, after a
defence that with a more civilized foe, would have entitled her to the honours
of a liberal capitulation. These facts, and sundry others, of a similar nature,
had often been recapitulated with suitable exaltation, in the presence of her
daughters, and the bosoms of the young Amazons, were now strangely fluctuating
between natural terror, and the ambitious wish to do something that might render
them worthy of being the children of such a mother. It appeared that the
opportunity for distinction of this wild character, was no longer to be denied
them.
    The party of strangers was, already within a hundred rods of the rock.
Either consulting their usual wary method of advancing, or admonished by the
threatening attitudes of two figures, who had thrust forth the barrels of as
many old muskets, from behind the stone entrenchment, the new comers halted,
under favor of an inequality in the ground, where a growth of grass thicker than
common, offered the advantage of concealment. From this spot, they reconnoitred
the fortress, for several anxious, and to Ellen, interminable minutes. Then, one
advanced singly, and apparently more in the character of a herald than of an
assailant.
    Phoebe, do you fire, and no, Hetty, you, were beginning to be heard between
the half frightened and