"What for? Poaching?--shooting their wolf?"

"Any one else would be safe, grandfather--except poor Ralph!"

"Go yourself then. May-day!"

"I would, grandfather! I would not be afraid!" She put her soft little
hand on his cheek to turn his head to look into her confident eyes.

"An able and worshipful ambassador!" he said banteringly.

"Oh, grandfather, this is no time to risk quarrels among the settlers,
and bloodshed. Oh, the herders would kill him! And the Injuns all so
unfriendly--they might take the chance to get on the war-path again when
the settlers are busy killing each other--and oh, the cow-drivers will
kill Ralph Emsden!"

All this persuasion was of necessity in a distinct loud voice;
unnoticed, however, for a crisis had supervened in the play of the
children by the chimney-place settle, and the sanguinary struggles and
scalping in the storming of the fort were blood-curdling to behold to
any one with enough imagination to discern a full-armed and fierce
savage in a kernel of corn, and a stanch and patriotic Carolinian in a
pebble. But when Peninnah Penelope Anne, all attuned to this high key,
burst out weeping with commensurate resonance, all the vocations of the
household came to a standstill, and her mother appeared, surprised and
reproving, in the doorway.

"Peninnah Penelope Anne," she said with her peculiar exact deliberation