"You know," said she, "you are always alarming us unnecessarily: the neighbors' children have frightened you to death.

Go back to your play, and learn to be more courageous." So the children returned to their sports, hardly persuaded by their mother's arguments.

While they were thus seated upon the trunk of the tree, their discourse was interrupted by the note, apparently, of a quail not far off.
"Listen," said the boy, as a second note answered the first; "do you hear that ?" "Yes," was the reply, and, after a few moments' silence, "do you not hear a rustling among the branches of the tree yonder ?" "Perhaps it is a squirrel--but look! what is that?
Surely I saw something red among the branches.

It looked like a fawn popping up its head." At this moment, the children, who had been gazing so intently in the direction of the fallen tree that all other objects were forgotten, felt themselves seized from behind and pinioned in an iron grasp.

What were their horror and dismay to find themselves in the arms of savages, whose terrific countenances and gestures plainly showed them to be enemies! They made signs to the children to be silent, on pain of death, and hurried them off, half dead with terror, in a direction leading from their father's habitation.