month Lovewell set out again, this time with eighty-seven men.
They ascended the frozen Merrimac, passed Lake Winnepesaukee, pushed
nearly to the White Mountains, and encamped on a branch of the upper
Saco. Here they killed a moose--a timely piece of luck, for they were in
danger of starvation, and Lovewell had been compelled by want of food to
send back a good number of his men. The rest held their way, filing on
snowshoes through the deathlike solitude that gave no sign of life
except the light track of some squirrel on the snow, and the brisk note
of the hardy little chickadee, or black-capped titmouse, so familiar in
the winter woods."

Now here is where the foolhardiness of the expedition begins to appeal
to us. Supposing just here they had met five hundred crazy Indians with
five hundred crazy bows and arrows? And they must have expected it. They
were searching for Indians. Perhaps they were seeking martyrdom? But the
New Englander of the frontier was nothing if not foolhardy. They mistook
it for bravery, and there must have been some bravery amalgamated with
it, because a man must have a certain quantity of that rarity before he
can lend himself out as a target at two shillings and sixpence a day,
"out of which he was to maintain himself."

Now, if you have patience to follow you will learn that they ultimately
met the very thing which you expect--which they must have expected.

"Thus far the scouts had seen no human footprints; but on the twentieth
of February they found a lately abandoned wigwam, and following the
snowshoe tracks that led from it--" Right into the lion's jaw, as it
were. Perhaps they were anxious to be shot to get out of their
misery--"at length saw smoke rising at a distance out of the gray
forest." They saw their finish, and their hearts were filled with joy.
"The party lay close till two o'clock in the morning; then, cautiously
approaching, found one or more wigwams, surrounded them, and killed all
the inmates, ten in number." They were to pay dear for this, as anyone
could have told them. "They brought home the scalps in triumph, ... and
Lovewell began at once to gather men for another hunt.... At the middle
of April he had raised a band of forty-six." One of the number was Seth
Wyman, ... a youth of twenty-one, graduated at Harvard College, in 1723,
and now a student of theology. Chaplain though he was, he carried a gun,
knife and hatchet like the others, and not one of the party was mor