"If they come to the house and find you away, they will take your stores and burn your roof, suspecting that you are afraid to meet them openly; but they will not harm you if you meet them with open hand and fearless brow: if they eat of your bread, they will not harm you; me they would kill by a cruel death--the war-knife is in their heart against the daughter of the _brave_." The boys thought Indiana's advice good, and they felt no fear for themselves, only for Catharine, whom they counselled to remain in the shanty with Wolfe.
The Indians seemed intent only on the sport which they had come to enjoy, seeming in high glee, and as far as they could see quite peaceably disposed; every night they returned to the camp on the north side, and the boys could see their fires gleaming among the trees on the opposite shore, and now and then in the stillness of the evening their wild shouts of revelry would come faintly to their ears, borne by the breeze over the waters of the lake.
The allusion that Indiana had made to her own history, though conveyed in broken and hardly intelligible language, had awakened feelings of deep interest for her in the breasts of her faithful friends.

Many months after this she related to her wondering auditors the fearful story of the massacre of her kindred, and which I may as well relate, as I have raised the curiosity of my youthful readers, though to do so I must render it in my own language, as the broken half-formed sentences in which its facts were conveyed to the ears of my Canadian Crusoes would be unintelligible to my young friends.

_[FN: The facts of this narrative were gathered from the lips of the eldest son of a Rice Lake chief.

I have preferred giving it in the present form, rather than as the story of the Indian girl.

Simple as it is, it is matter of history.]_ There had been for some time a jealous feeling existing between the chiefs of two principal tribes of the Ojebwas and the Mohawks, which like a smothered fire had burnt in the heart of each, without having burst into a decided blaze--for each strove to compass his ends and obtain the advantage over the other by covert means.