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About midnight she was awakened by wild cries in the woods outside, and lay a minute, numb with fright, before she remembered where she was. Then she nudged her great-great-grandmother, Letitia, who lay next her.

“What’s that?” she whispered fearfully.

“Oh, it’s nothing but a catamount. Go to sleep again,” said her great-great-grandmother sleepily. Her great-great-aunt, Phyllis, the youngest of them all, laughed on the other side.

“She’s afraid of a catamount,” said she.

Letitia could not go to sleep for a long while, for the wild cries continued, and she thought several times that the catamount was scratching up the walls of the house. When she did fall asleep it was not for long, for the fierce yells she had heard when she had first opened her little green door sounded again in her ears.

This time she did not need to wake her great-great-grandmother, who sat straight up in bed at the first sound.

“What’s that?” whispered Letitia.

“Hush!” replied the other. “Injuns!”

Both the great-great-aunts were awake; they all listened, scarcely breathing. The yells came again, but fainter; then again, and fainter still. Letitia’s great-great-grandmother settled back in bed again.

“Go to sleep now,” said she. “They’ve gone away.”

But Letitia was weeping with fright. “I can’t go to sleep,” she sobbed. “I’m afraid they’ll come again.”

“Very likely they will,” replied the other Letitia coolly. “They come ‘most every night.”

The little great-great-aunt Phyllis laughed again. “She can’t go to sleep because she heard Injuns,” she tittered.

“Hush,” said her sister Letitia, “she’ll get accustomed to them in time.”

But poor Letitia slept no more till four o’clock. Then she had just fallen into a sweet doze when she was pulled out of bed.

“Come, come,” said her great-great-great-grandmother, Goodwife Hopkins, “we can have no lazy damsels here.”

Letitia found that her bedfellows were up and dressed and downstairs. She heard a queer buzzing sound from below, as she stood in her bare feet on the icy floor and gazed about her, dizzy with sleep.

“Hasten and dress yourself,” said Goodwife Hopkins. “Here are some of Letitia’s garments I have laid out for you. Those which you wore here I have put away in the chest. They are too gay, and do not befit a sober, God-fearing damsel.”

With that, Goodwife Hopkins descended to the room below, and Letitia dressed herself. It did not take her long. There was not much to put on beside a coarse wool petticoat and a straight little wool gown, rough yarn stockings, and such shoes as she had never seen.

“I couldn’t run from Injuns in these,” thought Letitia miserably. When she got downstairs she discovered what the buzzing noise was. Her great-great-grandmother was spinning. Her great-great-aunt Candace was knitting, and little Phyllis was scouring the hearth. Goodwife Hopkins was preparing breakfast.

“Go to the other wheel,” said she to Letitia, “and spin until the porridge is done. We can have no idle hands here.”

Letitia looked helplessly at a great spinning-wheel in the corner, then at her great-great-great-grandmother.

“I don’t know how,” she faltered.

Then all the great-grandmothers and the aunts cried out with astonishment.

“She doesn’t know how to spin!” they said to one another.

Letitia felt dreadfully ashamed.

“You must have been strangely brought up,” said Goodwife Hopkins. “Well, take this stocking and round out the toe. There will be just about time enough for that before breakfast.”

“I don’t know how to knit,” stammered Letitia.

Then there was another cry of astonishment. Goodwife Hopkins cast about her for another task for this ignorant guest.

“Explain the doctrine of predestination,” said she suddenly.

Letitia jumped up and stared at her with scared eyes.

“Don’t you know what predestination is?” demanded Goodwife Hopkins.

“No, ma’am,” half sobbed Letitia.

Her great-great-grandmother and her great-great-aunts made shocked exclamations, and her great-great-great-grandmother looked at her with horror. “You have been brought up as one of the heathen,” said she. Then she produced a small book, and Letitia was bidden to seat herself upon a stool and learn the doctrine of predestination before breakfast.

The kitchen was lighted only by one tallow candle and the firelight, for it was still far from dawn. Letitia drew her little stool close to the hearth, and bent anxiously over the fire-lit page. She committed to memory easily, and repeated the text like a frightened parrot when she was called upon.