"The green-coats and savages were now swarming around the house of Major Jelles, whooping and yelling and capering and firing off their guns. Bang-bang-bang! Jesus! the noise of their musketry stopped your ears.
"Then Mistress Grant she took the old gentleman by the arm and was begging him to go with her through the orchard, where we now could see Mrs. Romeyn running up the hill and carrying her two little children in her arms.
"I also went to Mr. Fonda and took him by the other arm, but he walked with us only to the porch and there seized my gun that I had left there.
"'Stand fast, Penelope!' he pipes up, 'I will defend your life and honour!' And further he would not budge, but turns mulish, yet too feeble to lift the gun he clung to with a grip I could not loosen lest I break his bones.
"We got him, with his gun a-dragging, into the house, but could force him no farther, for he resisted and reproached me, demanding that I stand and face the enemy.
"At that, through the window of the library wing I see a body of green-coats,—some three hundred or better,—marching down the Schenectady road. And some score of these, and as many Indians, were leaving the Major's house, which they had fired; and now all began to run toward us, firing off their muskets at our house as they came on.
"I was grazed, as you see, sir, and the blow dashed out my senses for a moment. But when I came alive I found I had fallen beside the wainscot of the east wall, where is a secret spring panel made for Mr. Fonda's best books. My fall jarred it open; and into this closet I crawled; and the next moment the library was filled with the trample of yelling men.
"I heard Mistress Grant give a kind of choking cry, and, through the crack of the wainscot door, I saw a green-coat put one hand over her mouth and hold her, cursing her for a rebel slut and telling her to hush her damned head or he'd do the proper business for her.
"An Indian I knew, called Quider, and having only one arm, took hold of Mr. Fonda and led him from the library and out to the lawn, where I could see them both through the west window. The Indian acted kind to the old gentleman, gave him his hat and his book and cane, and conducted him south across the lawn. I could see it all plainly through the wainscot crack.
"Then, of a sudden, the one-armed Indian swung his hatchet and clove that helpless and bewildered old man clean down to his neck cloth. And there, before all assembled, he took the old man's few white hairs for a scalp!