n influence was at work on the borders of the St. Lawrence that
yearly rendered the Hurons more tractable. From raiding the
settlements of the St. Lawrence, the Iroquois were sweeping in a
scourge more deadly than smallpox up the Ottawa to the very forests of
Georgian Bay. The Hurons no longer dared to go down to Quebec in
swarming canoes. Only a few picked warriors--perhaps two hundred and
fifty--would venture so near the Iroquois fighting ground.

One winter night, as the priests sat round their hearth fire watching
the mournful shadows cast by the blazing logs on the rude walls,
Brebeuf, the soldier, lion-hearted, the fearless, told in a low, dreamy
voice of a vision that had come,--the vision of a huge fiery cross
rising slowly out of the forest and moving across the face of the sky
towards the Huron country. It seemed to come from the land of the
Iroquois. Was the priest's vision a dream, or his own intuition deeper
than reason, assuming dire form, portending a universal fear? Who can
tell? I can but repeat the story as it is told in their annals.

{87} "How large was the cross?" asked the other priests. Brebeuf gazes
long in the fire.

"Large enough to crucify us all," he answers.

And, as he had dreamed, fell the blow.

St. Joseph, of the Lake Simcoe region, was situated a day's travel from
the main fortified mission of Ste. Marie. Round it were some two
thousand Hurons to whom Father Daniel ministered. Father Daniel was
just closing the morning services on July the 4th, 1648. His tawny
people were on their knees repeating the responses of the service, when
from the forest, humming with insect and bird life, arose a sound that
was neither wind nor running water--confused, increasing, nearing!
Then a shriek broke within the fort palisades,--"The enemy! the
Iroquois!" and the courtyard was in an uproar indescribable. Painted
redskins, naked but for the breech clout, were dashing across the
cornfields to scale the palisades or force the hastily slammed gates.
Father Daniel rushed from church to wigwams rallying the Huron
warriors, while the women and children, the aged and the feeble, ran a
terrified rabble to the shelter of the chapel. Before the Hurons could
man the walls, Iroquois hatchets had hacked holes of entrance in the
palisades. The fort was rushed by a bloodthirsty horde making the air
hideous with fiendish screams.

"Fly! Save yourselves!" shouted the priest. "I stay here! We sha