protecting their homes, instead of fleeing to and swelling the number of the panic-stricken people, hundreds of miles outside of the least danger of being molested. Such persons as would thus censure them should consider that they had a very limited number of guns, a small amount of ammunition, and were encumbered with terrified women and children. Even many of the men were no less frightened than the women, and they were liable at any moment to be attacked by a blood-thirsty, relentless foe, sparing none; or if making prisoners of any, reserving them for a worse fate than instant death. Flight was their most available means of safety.

In the mean time, the courier rode swiftly on to warn the inhabitants of Columbia, on the north of Green Lake, Norway Lake on the north, and Eagle Lake on the west. The few families at Columbia and vicinity hurriedly collected at the residence of Mr. Thomas, to consult on taking action for defense or escape. By the time they had here assembled, it was nearly night. Realizing that they could not reach any place for protection before the close of the day, and if attacked in the darkness, on the road, they would have no shelter for their women and children, they concluded to wait till the next day, at the house they were in, the roof and thin sided walls affording shelter, however inefficient in resisting the leaden hail from Indian guns; securing their teams as near to the house as possible, and making such arrangements for protection as limited means and material was available. The persons here congregated were Mr. Thomas, his wife and two children. Mr. Job. Burdick, his wife and two children, Mr. Adams, his wife and four children, Wm. Kouts, Silas Foot, his wife and five children, and three children of S. R. Foot, who lived six miles west at Eagle Lake. The eldest daughter of S. R. Foot was teaching a school in a house some eighty rods from the Thomas residence, a brother and sister of the teacher boarding with their uncle and attending school. I think that this was the first school west of Forest City. The people of the vicinity had built a school house and organized an inde

pendent school in the spring prior to this time. The men at the house on the alert, listening for the report of a gun, or any noise that would indicate that Indians were in the country, and closely watching all the avenues of approach, discovered a person moving about the school house. It was so dark that they could not determine whether the person was a white man or an Indian. Two of the men proceeded to investigate. Arriving at the place they identified him to be a man who had been seen in the settlement some days previously, who apparently had no business, and when spoken with, his conversation implied that he was deranged, or foolish. Being asked what he was doing at the school house, he replied that he was going to sleep in the house. Questioned as to his business and where he was traveling to, his answers were evasive. The men at once suspicioned him to be a spy, in alliance with the Indians, and preceding them for the purpose of reporting by signal, or otherwise, the condition that the people were in to make a defense. They more readily came to this conclusion from it being a well known fact that outlawed vicious white men were living with the Yankton Sioux north and west of the Minnesota agencies, and the remark made by him a day or two before: " •You settlers have some nice crops; my boys will be along and harvest them in a few days," words at the time uttered thought to be the ravings of a crazy man, but now recurring to mind more fully confirmed the impression that this man was an emissary of the savages. They made a prisoner of him, taking him to the house, placing him under the dining table in the room already crowded, and kept him under guard until the next day, when on further examination he was released. The women and children within, momentarily expecting to hear the terriffic war whoop and the crash of the leaden missiles of death through the walls of the house, sleeplessly passed the night, the men on guard outside. The minutes seemed hours, and the hours endless. At the break of day, as the light in the east appeared, the greater were their fears. Knowing that an enemy had opportunity under

the cover of darkness to approach and unperceived select a position that commanded the house, from which they would fire on the guards in the morning light, the men with bated breath silently awaited the expected fusilade.

Time slowly passed, the sun in the east sent its rays of light over the prairie, the lakes and woodlands, cheering the people, and renewing their hopes of escape and safety. Hastily partaking of such food as they had brought from their homes, some of the men returned to their deserted houses to obtain bedding and clothing, and on going back made preparation to go to a place of protection, or to some town in the interior, leaving their stock and most of their effects at their deserted homes. Seeing teams and people approaching on the road, and cattle being driven with them, they ascertained them to be Bachland, Swanson and Peterson, who lived in the vicinity of Eagle Lake. Others of the party were from Norway Lake. They reported that they heard the firing of guns in the direction of Foot's, at the time they left home, and believed that Foot and those living near to him were all killed. This was sad intelligence to the young girl teacher and her brother and sister, who expected to see their parent with this party, as they drove up. The accession of this party and their report of supposed attack at Eagle Lake, accelerated the movement of those of the Thomas party. Forming teams in line, those from the house, in advance of the late arival, choosing Kouts. Foot and Burdick to lead and conduct the whole, they proceeded on the road to Diamond Lake, Swanson, a Swede. of some fifty years of age, and Bachland, of about eighty years of age. also a Swede, father of John Bachland, who with his family was with the wagons, were driving the cattle in the rear. Arriving at Diamond Lake in less than the usual time of traveling that distance, for the fear of the people seemed to be participated in by their teams, they found the houses vacated and the inhabitants gone.

They drove rapidly on the road towards Forest City, closely scanning every bank of bushes and depression in the ground that would give concealment to an Indian.

They had proceeded a few miles, when, at some distance to the rear, they saw riding towards them mounted Indians. Calls were made to Swanson and Bachland. to leave the cattle and come to the wagons. The call was unheeded, the men persisting in driving up their cattle. Under the direction

of Job Burdick, who had seen service with trains on the plains, the teams and wagons were formed in a circle, the women and children placed within the enclosure of the wagons, and all commenced digging a hole in the ground, with axes and spades loosening the prairie sod and earth, women using pans, cups, anything, in excavating, and placing the earth on the outer edge of the circular pit, working for dear life. Soon they had an embankment around them that was a protection from gun shot and arrows while they lay or sat down. Kouts and Foot had rifles, others had shot guns. but there was little ammunition. From a bar of lead, two women with hammer and flat-iron, pounded into shape, balls. and slugs to be used in the shot guns. In the meantime, the Indians rode up to the men, who were more intent on saving their cattle than their lives. One Indian leaping from his pony, swinging his battle ax, buried it into the brain of the old grey head of grandfather Bachland, felling him to the earth. Another rode up, and placing his gun near to Swanson. killed him instantly. Their families saw them murdered, but could not give them any assistance or any protection. Then the Indians rode at a safe distance beyond range of the men's rifles around the corralled wagons, and perceiving that the company within were prepared to give them a warm reception, if they were to come to close action, they went to an elevated rise of ground, overlooking the surroundings from which they fired on the corrall, without effecting any damage, more than the disabling of one ox, the distance being such that the force of the balls was spent as they reached the wagons. A few shots were fired by Kouts and Foot, more in defiance than expectation of doing execution.

The Indians remounted their ponies, rode to the cattle that were feeding, shooting some of them, then went off to the north. The party in the corrall concluded that they had gone for others and would return with additional numbers to again attack them. They put a man onto one of the two horses with instruction to ride to Forest City for assistance to come to their relief. The man on the way saw, or imagined he saw, Indians, became frightened, left the road, and rode his horse into a slough. His horse being mired and exhausted he left him, to make the balance of the way on foot, and got lost and did not reach the place until hours after the party he had left on the prairie arrived.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

WAR MEMORIES.

BELIEVE the most beautiful and romantic military camp ever seen was that at Lake Providence, Louisiana, occupied by Crocker's Iowa Brigade in the spring of 1863. The army of the Tennessee was then gathered mostly at Young's Point, but the Iowa Brigade had been moved up to occupy the upper bank of Lake Providence.

This lake bow-shaped in form, the lower side forming the bow-is about a mile in length and a quarter of a mile broad, with the shore of one end resting on the bank of the Mississippi and the other in a direction at right angles to the river.

About a mile below the lake, on the river, is the little town of Lake Providence, and above the lake on its upper or northerly border was the plantation of Mr. Sparrow, then a member of the Confederate States Senate, with its mansion, billiard hall, gardens, summer houses, negro quarters and negroes, all there except Mr. Sparrow himself. I recollect one day while we were there seeing an elderly lady and two young ladies together entering the mansion and soon afterwards depart, stepping into a boat waiting at the shore in which they were rowed across the lake. They were the Senator's wife and two daughters taking their last look at their old home.

General James B. McPherson, who commanded our army corps (the 17th). had his headquarters at the foot or westerly end of the lake on the opposite side from the Sparrow plantation, and Colonel M. M. Crocker, who had not yet been promoted to Brigadier General, but commanded the Iowa Brigade, had his headquarters in the Sparrow mansion.

To say that the members of the Iowa Brigade did not enjoy themselves rowing on the lake, playing billiards, fishing for loggerheads and bantering the "darkies," would be to misrepresent the facts of history. Any female relative or friend at home, whether wife, sister, or sweetheart, who spent her time bewailing in tears the privations of loved ones in Crock