“Why, Colonel Boone, be this here you?  Why when did you come—­and how on yarth did ye git here—­and what in the name o’ all creation has been happening?  For ye see I war jest dosing away thar by the fire, and dreaming all sorts of things, like all nater, when somehow I kind o’ thought I’d all at once turned into a man and gone to war a rale soldier; and the battle had opened, and the big guns war blazing away, and the little guns war popping off, and the soldiers war shrieking and groaning and falling around me, like all possessed; and men a trampling, and horses a running like skeered deer; and then I sort o’ woke up, and jumped up, and seed all them dead Injen wretches; and then I jest begun to think as how it warn’t no dream at all, but a living truth, all ’cept my being a man and a soldier, as you com’d up.  Well, ef this arn’t a queer world,” resumed the good dame, catching breath meanwhile, “as Preacher Allprayer used to say, then maybe as how I don’t know nothing at all about it.”

“Your dream war a very nateral one, Mrs. Younker,” returned Boone, who, during the speech of the other, had been actively employed in scattering the burning brands, to prevent the recurrence of another sad catastrophe; “and I’m rejoiced to see that you’ve escaped unharmed, amid this bloody work.  Allow me to set you free;” and as he spoke, he drew his scalping knife, and severed the thongs that bound her wrists.

“Gracious on me!” cried the dame, chafing the parts which had been swollen by the tightness of the cords; “how clever ’tis to get free agin, and have the use o’ one’s hands and tongue, to do and say jest what a body pleases; for d’ye know, Colonel Boone, them thar imps of Satan war awfully afeared o’ my talking to ’em, to convince ’em they war the meanest varmints in the whole univarsul yarth o’ creation; and actually put a peremshus stop to my saying what I thought on ’em; although I told ’em as how it war a liberty as these blessed colonies war this moment fighting for with the hateful red-coated Britishers.  But, Lord presarve us! gracious on us! where in marcy’s sake is my dear, darling Ella?” concluded Mrs. Younker, with vehemence and alarm, as she now missed her adopted daughter for the first time.

“She’s here, mother,” answered a voice close behind her; and turning round, the dame uttered a cry of joy, sprung into the arms of her son Isaac, and wept upon his neck—­occasionally articulating, in a choked voice: 

“God bless you, Isaac!  God bless you, son!—­you’re a good boy—­the Lord’s presarved you through the whole on’t—­the Lord be praised!—­but your father, poor lad—­your father!” and with a strong burst of emotion, she buried her face upon his breast, and wept aloud.

“I know it,” sobbed forth Isaac, his whole frame shaken with the force of his feelings:  “I—­I know the whole on’t, mother—­Ella’s told me.  I’d rather he’d bin killed a thousand times; but thar’s no help for it now!”