eight
children, the youngest a week old. The mother was in bed with the
infant, tended by her nurse Mary Neff. "Run for the garrison," he
shouted.

The children started, the oldest boys and girls carrying the youngest.
Mr. Dustin rushed to the stable and bridled his horse, intending to take
Mrs. Dustin; but the Indians were so close upon him that he could not.
He leaped upon the horse with his gun, and galloped away, the bullets
flying around him, leaving his wife, baby, and Mary Neff.

The Indians entered the house, dragged Mrs. Dustin from the bed, and
seized the nurse. One caught up the infant by the legs, and dashed its
head against a rock.

Mr. Dustin overtook his children. It would be impossible, he thought, to
save them all; which should he leave? All were equally dear. How could
he make a selection? He would not; he would die in defending them, and
do what he could to save all.

"Run!" he shouted, urging them on; then leaped from his horse, and
fired, sprung upon the animal, again loaded his gun while upon the
gallop, overtook his children, dismounted, fired again, and so, keeping
the Indians at bay, brought all his children in safety to the garrison.

Not so fortunate his neighbors. In a few minutes the Indians massacred
twenty-seven men, women, and children, set several houses on fire, and
with a number of captives started for Canada.

It was the middle of March. The rivers and streams were swollen. There
was snow on the ground. Mrs. Dustin had but one shoe; the other foot was
bare; it was torn by the stones, chilled by the cold. Every step was
marked with blood. Her fellow-captives fainted and fell one by one, and
the tomahawk and scalping-knife finished them. All except Mrs. Dustin
and Mary Neff were killed. For four days they travelled through the dark
forest toward the northwest. The Indians gave them little to eat. The
third day brought them to the rendez-vous of the Indians, on a little
island where the Contoocook falls into the Merrimac.

"There the old smoked in silence their pipes, and the young
To the pike and the white perch their baited lines flung;
There the boy shaped his arrows, and there the shy maid
Wove her many-hued baskets and bright wampum braid."

There were fertile intervales along the Merrimac where the deer found
pasture. The Indians could spear salmon in abundance.

They had captured a little boy named Samuel Leonardson near Worcester,
Massachusetts, and he had lea