"Where's your family?"
"Wall, now, thar's where I've ben specially favored again. You know that there are three of us—myself, Mrs. Perkins, and Master George Washington Perkins, aged four years, so I had my hands full in looking after them; but the second Mrs. Perkins is a remarkable woman, and possesses an exceedingly powerful mind—an exceedingly powerful mind, beyond all question. I must give her the credit for the able management of this enterprise, for she deserves more credit than I. You know how brave a man I am by nature, and how I have a natural hankering for gore. Wall, that yearning to be killing some one made me furious to plunge head first into the battle when it began raging down the valley, and I started seventeen times—yes, seventeen times—to go in to do or die, I didn't care which, but Mrs. Perkins had her eagle eye on me, and every time I made a rush, she rushed also, and caught me by the coat-tails, and nothing short of an earthquake could have persuaded her to let go. Wall, to make that story short, she prevailed, and kept me out of the struggle, thanks be to the Lord for all that."
"But how did you manage to keep clear of the Indians?"
"There it was her planning again. She called to mind a spot in the woods not far away, where, when she was a sweet little girl, she used to play hide-and-whoop with her playmates, and where she was always able to secure a hiding that baffled the skill of her young friends, and straightway it occurred to her that there was the very spot in which to take refuge, and there we went."
"Any trouble in getting there?"
"Nothing to speak of," replied the farmer, in his lofty way. "Of course the Tories and Indians tried to head us off, but I had a gun, and the strength of my good right arm, and more than all that, I had Mrs. Perkins as my second in command, and where was the use of any one trying to break such a combination as that? We were bound to prevail, and we never allowed ourselves to be turned aside by any trifles, and we reached the refuge in safety, and there we are staying, and expect to stay till things quiet down again."
"But how did you manage for food?" asked Jo, desirous of testing the accuracy of the Mohawk's judgment when he declared that the first gun fired had been discharged by a man in the situation of Perkins while searching for something to eat.
"Wall," he said, in the old drawling style peculiar to men who love to hear themselves talk, "when stealing becomes a matter of necessity, it ain't stealing any longer, and I have been in the habit of slipping out on the sly and fetching down some of the stock that's roaming through the woods without knowing who their master is—thanks be to the Lord for all that!"
"Was that you who fired off your gun a little while ago?"
"I've shot off my rifle twice within the last hour. The first time was at a hog, and I missed him, for, somehow or other, the rampaging of the Indians and Tories through the valley seems to have upset everything, the dumb animals as well—Mrs. Perkins is more nervous than usual—thanks be to the—I was about to say that the dumb critters know that something is going on round them that ain't right, and they are as wild as mad bulls, which is why I come to miss hitting that porker."