Indians in the neighborhood, and twice there were attacks. Letitia learned to load the guns and hand the powder and bullets.

She grew more and more homesick as the days went on. They were all kind to her, and she became fond of them, especially of the great-great-grandmother of her own age, and the little great-great-aunts, but they seldom had any girlish sports together. Goodwife Hopkins kept them too busily at work. Once in a while, as a special treat, they were allowed to play bean-porridge-hot for fifteen minutes. They were not allowed to talk after they went to bed, and there was little opportunity for girlish confidences.

However, there came a day at last when Captain Hopkins and his wife were called away to visit a sick neighbor, some twelve miles distant, and the four girls were left in charge of the house. At seven o'clock the two younger went to bed, and Letitia and her great-great-grandmother remained up to wait for the return of their elders, as they had been instructed. Then it was that the little great-great-grandmother showed Letitia her treasures. She had only two, and was not often allowed to look at them, lest they wean her heart away from more serious things. They were kept in a secret drawer of the great chest for safety, and were nothing but a little silver snuff-box with a picture on the top, and a little flat glass bottle, about an inch and a half long.

“The box belonged to my grandfather, and the bottle to his mother. I have them because I am the eldest, but I must not set my heart on them unduly,” said Letitia's great-great-grandmother.

Letitia tried to count how many “greats” belonged to the ancestors who had first owned these treasures, but it made her dizzy. She had never told the story of the little green door to any of them. She had been afraid to, knowing how shocked they would be at her disobedience. Now, however, when the treasure was replaced, she was moved in confidence, and told her great-great-grandmother the story.

“That is very strange,” said her great-great-grandmother, when Letitia had finished. “We have a little green door, too; only ours is on the outside of the house, in the north wall. There's a spruce tree growing close up against it that hides it, but it is there. Our parents have forbidden us to open it, too, and we have never disobeyed.”

She said the last with something of an air of superior virtue. Letitia felt terribly ashamed.

“Is there any key to your little green door?” she asked meekly.

For answer her great-great-grandmother opened the secret drawer of the chest again, and pulled out a key with a green ribbon in it, the very counterpart of the one in the satin-wood box.

Letitia looked at it wistfully.

“I should never think of disobeying my parents, and opening the little green door,” remarked her great-great-grandmother, as she put back the key in the drawer. “I should think something dreadful would happen to me. I have heard it whispered that the door opened into the future. It would be dreadful to be all alone in the future, without one's kins-folk.”

“There may not be any Indians or catamounts there,” ventured Letitia.

“There might be something a great deal worse,” returned her great-great-grandmother severely.

After that there was silence between the two, and possibly also a little coldness. Letitia knitted and her great-great-grandmother knitted. Letitia also thought shrewdly. She had very little doubt that the key which she had just been shown might unlock another little green door, and admit her to her past which was her ancestors' future, but she realized that it was beyond her courage, even if she had the opportunity, to take it, and use it provided she could find the second little green door. She had been so frightfully punished for disobedience, that she dared not risk a second attempt. Then too how could she tell whether the second little green door would admit her to her grandmother's cheese-room? She felt so dizzy over what had happened, that she was not even sure that two and two made four, and b-o-y spelt boy, although she had mastered such easy facts long ago. Letitia had arrived at the point wherein she did not know what she knew, and therefore, she resolved that she would not use that other little key with the green ribbon, if she had a chance. She shivered at the possibilities which it might involve. Suppose she were to open the second little green door and be precipitated head first into a future far from the one which had merged into the past, and be more at a loss than now. She might find the conditions of life even more impossible than in her great-great-great-grandfather's log cabin with hostile Indians about. It might, as her great-great-grandmother Letitia had said, be much worse. So she knitted soberly, and the other Letitia knitted, and neither spoke, and there was not a sound except the crackling of the hearth fire and bubbling of water in a large iron pot which swung from the crane, until suddenly there was a frantic pounding at the door, and a sound as if somebody were hurled against it.

Both Letitias started to their feet. Letitia turned pale, but her great-great-grandmother Letitia looked as usual. She approached the door, and spoke quite coolly. “Who may be without?” said she.

She had taken a musket as she crossed the room, and stood with it levelled. Letitia also took a musket and levelled it, but it shook and it seemed as if her great-great-grandmother was in considerable danger.

There came another pound on the door, and a boy's voice cried out desperately. “It's me, let me in.”

“Who is me?” inquired Great-great-grandmother Letitia, but she lowered her musket, and Letitia did the same, for it was quite evident that this was no Indian and no catamount.

“It is Josephus Peabody,” answered the boy's voice, and Letitia gasped, for she remembered seeing that very name on the genealogical tree which hung in her great-aunt Peggy's front entry, although she could not quite remember where it came in, whether it was on a main branch or a twig.

“Are the Injuns after you?” inquired Great-great-grandmother Letitia.

“I don't know, but I heard branches crackling in the wood,” replied the terrified boy-voice, “and I saw your light through the shutters.”

“You rake the ashes over the fire, while I let him in,” ordered the great-great-grandmother Letitia, peremptorily, and Letitia obeyed.

She raked the ashes carefully over the fire, she hung blankets over the shutters, so there might be no tell-tale gleam, and the other Letitia drew bolts and bars, then slammed the door to again, and the bolts and bars shot back into place.

When Letitia turned around she saw a little boy of about her own age who looked strangely familiar to her. He was clad in homespun of a bright copperas color, and his hair was red, cut in a perfectly round rim over his forehead. He had big blue eyes, which were bulging with terror. He drew a sigh of relief as he looked at the two girls.

“If,” said he, “I had only had a musket I would not have run, but Mr. Holbrook and Caleb and Benjamin went hunting this morning, and they carried all the muskets, and I had nothing except this knife.”

With that the boy brandished a wicked-looking knife.

“You might have done something with that,” remarked Great-great-grandmother Letitia, and her voice was somewhat scornful.

“Yes, something,” agreed the boy. “It is a good knife. My father killed a big Injun and took it only last week. It is a scalping knife.”

“Do you mean to say,” asked the great-great-grandmother Letitia, “that you don't know enough to use that knife, great boy that you are?”

The boy straightened himself. He saw the other Letitia and his blue eyes were full of admiration and bravery. “Of course I know how,” said he. “Haven't I killed ten wolves and aren't their heads nailed to the outside of the meeting-house?”

Letitia was quite sure that