to which history and poetry have dedicated some of their noblest efforts.

The trouble between the conflicting claimants for jurisdiction, after various attempts to fight them out, was arranged by compromises and agreements. The last of the engagements in this war between the Yankees and the Pennymites, in which lives were lost, took place on the 18th of October, 1784. It was long before the settlers were secured in the quiet possession of their lands. But as time passed, wiser counsels prevailed. A compromise was entered upon, in virtue of which the original settlers were secured the possession of their homes, and the long feud was finally healed.

Half a century of peace and prosperity has almost effaced the memory of the troublous years that succeeded, as it will require another half century to efface the memory of the bitter contest from which the country has recently so successfully emerged.

Things have moved along quietly in the valley for years; the development of her mineral wealth has brought in crowding ranks from every people and tongue and kindred; but while she has increased in wealth and material prosperity, the romance of her history closed with the century. The shaft and the big tunnel and the drifts have taken the place of stockade and forts and redoubts; the puffing of the steamengines and the locomotives, as they go whirling through

the valley, give out sounds other than the war-whoop of the savage and the mingled shouts and screams which followed it, and the light from her mountain sides is not that of the cannon or the wide-spread conflagration. Peace is written on her walls and prosperity in all her palaces. One sad episode will close the Romance of the History of Wyoming, viz.:

THE STORY OF FRANCES SLOCUM.

[From Stone's "History of Wyoming." New York, 1841.]

The Slocum family of Wyoming were distinguished for their sufferings during the war of the Revolution, and have been recently brought more conspicuously before the public in connection with the life of a longlost, but recently discovered sister; the story of the family opens with tragedy, and ends with romance without fiction.

Mr. Slocum, the father of the subject of the present narrative, was a non-combatant, being a member of the Society of Friends. Feeling himself, therefore, safe from the hostility even of the savages, he did not join the survivors of the massacre in their flight, but remained quietly in his farm-his house remaining in close proximity to the village of Wilkes-Barre.

But the beneficent principles of his faith had little weight with the Indians, notwithstanding the affection with which their race had been treated by the founder of Quakerism in Pennsylvania, the illustrious Penn, and long had the family cause to mourn their imprudence in not retreating from the doomed valley with their neighbors.

It was in the autumn of the same year of the invasion by Butler and Gi-en-gwah-toh, at midday, when the men were laboring in a distant field, that the house of Mr. Slocum was suddenly surrounded by a party of Delawares, prowling about the valley in more earnest search, as it seemed, of plunder, than of scalps or prisoners.

The inmates of the house, at the moment of the surprise, were Mrs. Slocum and four young children, the eldest of whom was a son, aged thirteen; the second a daughter, aged nine; Frances Slocum, aged five; and a little son, aged two years and a half. Near by the house, engaged in grinding a knife, was a young man named Kingsley, assisted in the operation by a lad. The first hostile act of the Indians was to shoot down Kingsley, and take his scalp with the knife he had been sharpening.

The girl nine years old appeared to have had the most presence of mind, for while the mother ran into the edge of the copse of wood near by, Frances at

tempted to secret herself behind a staircase, and the former seized her little brother, the youngest above mentioned, and ran off in the direction of the fort. True she could not make rapid progress, for she clung to the child, and not even the pursuit of the savages could induce her to drop her charge. The Indians did not pursue her far, and laughed heartily at the panic of the little girl, while they could not but admire her resolution. Allowing her to make her escape, they returned to the house, and, after helping themselves to such articles as they chose, prepared to depart.

But

The mother seems to have been unobserved by them, although, with yearning bosom, she had so disposed of herself that while she was screened from observation, she could notice all that occurred. judge of her feelings, at the moment they were about to depart, as she saw little Frances taken from her hiding-place, and preparations made to carry her away into captivity with her brother, already mentioned as being thirteen years old (who, by the way, had been restrained from attempted flight by lameness in one of his feet), and also the lad who a few moments before had been assisting Kingsley at the grindstone. The sight was too much for maternal tenderness to endure. Rushing from her place of concealment, she threw herself upon her knees at the feet of her

captors, and, with the most earnest entreaties, pleaded for their restoration. But their bosoms were made of sterner stuff than to yield even to the most eloquent and affectionate of mother's entreaties, and with characteristic stoicism they began to move. As a last resort, the mother appealed to their selfishness, and pointing to the maimed foot of her crippled son, urged as a reason why they should at least relinquish him, the delays and embarrassment he would occasion them on their journey. Being unable to walk, they would, of course, be compelled to carry him the whole distance, or leave him by the way, or take his life. Although insensible to the feelings of humanity, these considerations had the desired effect. The lad was left behind, while, deaf alike to the cries of the mother and the shrieks of the child, Frances was slung over the shoulder of a stalwart Indian with as much indifference as though she were a slaughtered fawn,

The long, lingering look which the mother gave to her child, as her captors disappeared in the forest, was the last glimpse of her sweet features that she ever had. But the vision was for many a long year ever present to her fancy.

As the Indian threw her child over his shoulder, her hair fell over her face, and the mother could never forget how the tears streamed down her cheeks when she brushed it away, as if to catch a last sad look of the