"Let us pray to God. He can help us, and He will, if we ask Him in the right spirit."
"I dunno how," added Ethan.
"I will pray for both of us. The Indians can't hear us now, but God can."
Fanny, in a whisper, uttered a brief and heart-felt prayer for protection and safety from the savage monsters who were thirsting for their blood. She prayed earnestly, and never before had her supplications come so directly from her heart. She pleaded for herself and for her companion, and the good Father seemed to be very near to her as she poured forth her simple petition.
"Thy will, not ours, be done," she murmured, as she thought that it might not be the purpose of "Him who doeth all things well" to save them from the tomahawk of the Indians. If it was not His will that they should pass in safety through this ordeal of blood, she asked that they might be happy in death, or submissive to whatever fate was in store for them.
Ethan listened to the prayer, and seemed to join earnestly in the petitions it contained. With his more devout companion, he felt that God was able to save them, to blunt the edges of the weapons raised to destroy them, or to transform their savage and bitter foes into the warmest and truest of friends.
"I feel better," said Fanny, after a moment of silence at the conclusion of the prayer.
"So do I," replied Ethan, whose altered look and more resolute tones confirmed his words. "I feel like I could fight some o' them Injins."
"We can do nothing by resistance."
"I dunno; if they don't burn the house, I reckon I know whar to find some shootin' fixin's."