clearing two. Ray was gone with Tom. I could not leave Polly Ann alone.
There was nothing for it but to wait.

Silently, that the children might not be waked and lurking savage might
not hear, we put the powder and bullets in the middle of the room and
loaded the guns and pistols. For Polly Ann had learned to shoot. She
took the loopholes of two sides of the cabin, I of the other two, and
then began the fearful watching and waiting which the frontier knows so
well. Suddenly the cattle stirred again, and stampeded to the other
corner of the field. There came a whisper from Polly Ann.

"What is it?" I answered, running over to her.

"Look out," she said; "what d'ye see near the mill?"

Her sharp eyes had not deceived her, for mine perceived plainly a dark
form skulking in the hickory grove. Next, a movement behind the rail
fence, and darting back to my side of the house I made out a long black
body wriggling at the edge of the withered corn-patch. They were
surrounding us. How I wished that Tom were home!

A stealthy sound began to intrude itself upon our ears. Listening
intently, I thought it came from the side of the cabin where the lean-to
was, where we stored our wood in winter. The black shadow fell on that
side, and into a patch of bushes; peering out of the loophole, I could
perceive nothing there. The noise went on at intervals. All at once
there grew on me, with horror, the discovery that there was digging under
the cabin.

How long the sound continued I know not,--it might have been an hour, it