laugh away her fears.

“So was my mother afraid this morning, at nothing,” he said. “She was of a mind that she saw Indians—Oh!” the boy’s voice was suddenly hushed.

Towering in the path in front of the children, like a great forest tree dressed in its gorgeous cloak of gaudy autumn leaves, stood the Indian chief, Big Hawk. He wore his war paint and his festival headdress of hawk’s feathers. Slung over his blanket were his bow and a quiver full of new arrows. It seemed little more than a second before the edges of the path and the deep places among the trees on either side were alive with the Indians of Big Hawk’s tribe.

“HE POINTED TOWARD HIS TRIBE’S CAMPING PLACE”

Big Hawk looked at the frightened children, indicating with gestures what was his plan. He pushed back the white cap from Deliverance’s pale forehead and laid his hand on the little girl’s sunny hair. Then he pointed toward his tribe’s camping place in the west. He wanted to take Deliverance there and hold her for a ransom. To Preserve he made gestures showing that he wished him to lead the way to the Edwards’ cabin that they might plunder it before going back that night.

Deliverance clung, crying, to Preserve. He tried to be brave, but it was a test for a man’s courage, and he was only a boy.

It was a second’s thought and a strange whim of a savage that saved the two. The wind of the fall blowing through the trees caught the ends of Preserve’s ribbon of honor and sent them, fluttering like tongues of flame, against the dark of the tree trunks. The color caught Big Hawk’s eye, and he touched the bow on Preserve’s cloak with one hand.

Quick as a flash a thought came to Preserve. He drew back from Big Hawk’s touch and put his own hands over the ribbon as if to guard it.

“Heap big chief!” Preserve’s voice rang out, brave and clear. Then, after waiting a second, he unpinned the red bow and held it, high, before Big Hawk’s face.

“Big Hawk, heap bigger chief!” he said, as he went boldly up to the Indian and fastened the ribbon on his blanket. Then he motioned to Big Hawk to return to his camp and show the rest of the tribe his new decoration. A slow smile overspread Big Hawk’s painted face. Then he turned and, motioning to his braves to follow him, went silently back through the woods, leaving Preserve and Deliverance alone, and safe.

Deliverance was the first to speak.

“My heart does beat so fast I can scarcely breathe, Preserve. Oh, but you are a brave boy! What shall we do now?” the little girl asked.

“Run!” said Preserve, without a moment’s hesitation. “We had best run like rabbits, Deliverance!”

Hand in hand, the two scampered along, Preserve helping the little girl over the rough places, until the light from a candle in Deliverance’s cabin was in sight. Her father had come home early, and when the children told him of their adventure, he set out to warn the rest of the settlers of the danger so bravely averted, and put them on guard against the Indians.

Preserve went on home, alone. His mother stood in the cabin door, anxious because he was so late.

“No ribbon? Oh, my lad, why have you disappointed me!” she said when she saw him.

“Big Hawk wears my decoration,” Preserve said, as he told his story. “But I think that Master Biddle would have rather that little Mistress Deliverance, for all her witching ways, had his red bow,” he finished, laughing.

The Soap Making of Remember Biddle

“It may chance that you will not be able to return by Thanksgiving Day?” Remember Biddle asked with almost a sob in her voice.

A little Puritan girl of long ago was Remember, dressed in a long straight gown of gray stuff, heavy hobnailed shoes and wearing a white kerchief crossed about her neck. She stood in the door of the little log farm-house that looked out upon the dreary stretch of the Atlantic coast with Plymouth Rock raising its gray head not so very far away.

No wonder Remember felt unhappy. Her mother was at the door, mounted upon their horse, and ready to start away for quite a long journey as journeys were counted in those days. She was going with a bundle of herbs to care for a sick neighbor who lived a distance of ten miles away. It had been an urgent summons, brought by the post carrier that morning. The neighbor was ill, indeed, and the fame of Mistress Biddle’s herb brewing was well known through the countryside.

She leaned down from the saddle to touch Remember’s dark braids. The little girl had run out beside the horse and laid her cheek against his soft side. Her father was far away in Boston, attending to some important matters of shipping. Her mother’s going left Remember all alone. She repeated her question, “Shall I be alone for Thanksgiving Day, mother, dear?” she asked.

“‘SHALL I BE ALONE FOR THANKSGIVING DAY, MOTHER, DEAR?’”

Her mother turned away that the little daughter might not see that her eyes, as well, were full of sorrow.

“I know not, Remember. I sent a letter this morning by the post carrier to Boston telling your father that I should wait for him at Neighbor Allison’s, and if I could leave the poor woman he could come home with me. I hope that we shall be here in time for Thanksgiving Day, but if it should happen, Remember, that you must be alone; take no thought of your loneliness. Think only of how much cause we have for being thankful in this free, fertile land of New England. And keep busy, dear child. You will find plenty to do in the house until my return.”

Throwing the girl a good-bye kiss, Mistress Biddle gave the horse a light touch with her riding whip and was off down the road, her long, dark cloak blowing like a gray cloud on the horizon in the chill November wind.

For a few moments Remember leaned against the beams of the door listening to the call of a flock of flying crows and the crackling of the dried cornstalks in the field back of the house. Beyond the cornfield lay the brown and green woods, uncut, save by an occasional winding Indian trail. The neighboring cabins were so far away that they looked like toy houses set on the edge of other fields of dried cornstalks. Looking again toward the woods Remember shivered a little. She saw in imagination, a tall, dark figure in gay blanket and trailing feather headdress stalk out from the depths of the thicket of pines and oaks. Then she laughed.

“There hasn’t an Indian passed here since early in the summer,” she said to herself. “Mother would not have left me here alone if she had not known that I should be quite safe. I will go in now and play that I am the mistress of this house, and I am getting it ready for company on Thanksgiving Day. It will be so much fun that I shall forget all about being a lonely little girl.”

It was a happy play. Remember tied one of her mother’s long aprons over her dress to keep it clean, and began her busy work of cleaning the house and making it shine from cellar to ceiling. She sorted the piles of ruddy apples and winter squashes and pumpkins in the cellar, and rehung the slabs of rich bacon and the strings of onions. As she touched the bundles of savory herbs that hung about the cellar walls, Remember gave a little sigh.

“I see no chance of these being used in the stuffing