“No indeed I havn’t,” said Joe.  “I’ll declare,” he continued, looking out, “I never should have thought of that.  I see now, well enough, how they got there without my seeing them.  They’ve got a great big ball of snow, half as high as a man’s head, and they’ve been rolling it all the time, and creeping along behind it.  They’re all standing before it now, and just as I looked one moved his leg, and then I saw what it was.  This beats the old boy himself.  It’s a mercy they didn’t come all the way and shoot me in the eye!”

“Hush!” said Boone.  “They must have heard something, or supposed they did, or else your neglect would have been fatal to you ere this.  They are now waiting to ascertain whether they were mistaken or not.  Move not, and speak no more, until I order you.”

“I won’t,” said Joe, still gazing at the erect dark forms.

“See how many there is—­can’t you count ’em?” said Sneak, in a whisper, leaning against Joe, and slyly taking a cartridge from his belt, slipped it in the muzzle of the musket which was standing against the palisade.

“What’re you doing with my gun?” asked Joe, in a very low tone, as he happened to turn his head and see Sneak take his hand away from the muzzle of the musket.

“Nothing—­I was only feeling the size of the bore.  It’s big enough to kick down a cow.”

“What are you tittering about? you think it’s a going to kick me again, but you’re mistaken—­it ain’t got two loads in this time.”

“Didn’t Mr. Boone jest tell you to keep quiet?” said Sneak.

“Don’t you speak—­then I won’t,” responded Joe.

The moon had not yet reached the meridian, and the dark shadow of the house reaching to the palisade on the west, prevented the Indians from observing the movements of the whites through the many slight apertures in the inclosure, but through which the besieged party could easily observe them.

After a long pause, during which neither party had uttered a word or betrayed animation by the least movement, Glenn felt the weight of a hand laid gently on his shoulder, and turning beheld Mary at his side.  Without a motion of the lips, she placed in his hand some bullets she had moulded, and then passing on to the other men, gave each a like quantity.

“Retire, now, my lass,” said Boone; and when she returned to the house, he continued, addressing Glenn—­“If they do not move one way or the other very soon, we will give them a broadside where they are.”

“And we could do execution at this distance,” observed Glenn.

“I’d be dead sure to kill one, I know I would,” said Sneak.

“Let me see if I could take aim,” said Joe, deliberately pointing his musket through the loophole.  The musket had inadvertently been cocked, and left in that condition, and no sooner did Joe’s finger gently press upon the trigger, than it went off, making an astounding report, and veiling the whole party in an immense cloud of smoke.