Chapter 14

Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?
--King John.

In order to preserve an even pace between the incidents of the tale,
it becomes necessary to revert to such events as occurred during the
ward of Ellen Wade.

For the few first hours, the cares of the honest and warm-hearted girl
were confined to the simple offices of satisfying the often-repeated
demands which her younger associates made on her time and patience,
under the pretences of hunger, thirst, and all the other ceaseless
wants of captious and inconsiderate childhood. She had seized a moment
from their importunities to steal into the tent, where she was
administering to the comforts of one far more deserving of her
tenderness, when an outcry among the children recalled her to the
duties she had momentarily forgotten.

"See, Nelly, see!" exclaimed half a dozen eager voices; "yonder ar'
men; and Phoebe says that they ar' Sioux-Indians!"

Ellen turned her eyes in the direction in which so many arms were
already extended, and, to her consternation, beheld several men,
advancing manifestly and swiftly in a straight line towards the rock.
She counted four, but was unable to make out any thing concerning
their characters, except that they were not any of those who of right
were entitled to admission into the fortress. It was a fearful moment
for Ellen. Looking around, at the juvenile and frightened flock that
pressed upon the skirts of her garments, she endeavoured to recall to
her confused faculties some one of the many tales of female heroism,
with which the history of the western frontier abounded. In one, a
stockade had been successfully defended by a single man, supported by
three or four women, for days, against the assaults of a hundred
enemies. In another, the women alone had been able to protect the
children, and the less valuable effects of their absent husbands; and
a third was not wanting, in which a solitary female had destroyed her
sleeping captors and given liberty not only to herself, but to a brood
of helpless young. This was the case most nearly assimilated to the
situation in which Ellen now found herself; and, with flushing cheeks
and kindling eyes, the girl began to consider, and to prepare her
slender means of defence.

She posted the larger girls at the little levers that were to cast the
rocks on the assailants, the smaller were to be used more for show
than any positive service they could perform, while, like any other
leader, she reserved her own person, as a superintendent and
encourager of the whole. When these dispositions were made, she
endeavoured to await the issue, with an air of composure, that she
intended should inspire her assistants with the confidence necessary