There, looking in through the open shutter, was the face of an Indian!  Dan and Zeb saw it at the same moment, and Nimrod, barking madly, rushed forward and leaped at the window.  Giving one of his wildcat shrieks, Zeb instantly went up the ladder to the loft with the agility of a monkey.  The head had bobbed out of sight so quickly that for an instant Nancy hardly believed her own eyes, but in that instant Dan had been quick to act.  He pressed the catch concealed in the fireplace, and, springing to his feet, seized Nancy and dragged her back into the secret closet.  They nearly fell over the pumpkin, which lay directly in their path, and it rolled before them into the closet.

Once inside, they instantly closed the door, and, with wildly beating hearts, sank down in the darkness.  About a foot above the floor there was a small knot-hole in the door, which the Goodman had purposely left for a peep-hole, and to this Dan now glued his eyes.  In spite of Nimrod’s frantic barking the house door was quietly opened, and when the dog flew at the intruder, he was stunned by a blow from the butt end of a musket, and his senseless body sent flying out of the door by a kick from a moccasined foot.

Then two Indians crept stealthily into the room.  They were surprised to find it empty.  Where could the children have gone?  They prowled cautiously about, looking under the table and behind everything that might afford a hiding-place, and, finding no trace of them, turned their attention in another direction.  Dan was already near to bursting with rage and grief over Nimrod, and now he had the misery of seeing the larger of the two Indians take his father’s musket from the deer-horn on the chimney-piece, while the other, who already had a gun, with grunts of satisfaction took the silver tankard from the table and hid it under his deer-skin jacket.  At first they did not seem to notice the ladder to the loft.  Soon, however, they paused beside it, and after they had exchanged a few grunts the larger Indian began to mount.  It was plain they meant to make a thorough search for the children who had so miraculously disappeared.

Dan remembered what his father had said about the Pequots; Nancy, with sick fear in her heart for Zeb, was shivering in a heap on the floor, her hands over her eyes, though that was quite unnecessary, since the closet was pitch dark.  Dan found her ear and whispered into it a brief report of what he had seen.  They could now hear the stealthy tread of moccasined feet above them on the floor of the loft.

“While they ’re upstairs,” whispered Dan, “I ’m going to slip out and get Father’s pistol.  It ’s hanging behind a string of onions, and they have n’t found it.”

“Oh, no!” gasped Nancy.  She clung to him, and in trying to get up he struck the pumpkin, which rolled away toward the outside wall of the closet.  Just then there was a fearful outburst of noise overhead.  There was the sound of something being dragged from under a bed across the floor, something which clawed and shrieked and fought like a wildcat.  There were grunts and the thump of moccasined feet dancing about in a lively struggle.