ast,
and prepared for battle. It proved, however, that the guns had been
fired at wild geese by some of their own number; on which they recovered
their spirits, fired a volley for joy, and boasted that the English
could not overtake them.[65] More women fainted by the way and died
under the hatchet,--some with pious resignation, some with despairing
apathy, some with a desperate joy.

Two hundred miles of wilderness still lay between them and the Canadian
settlements. It was a waste without a house or even a wigwam, except
here and there the bark shed of some savage hunter. At the mouth of
White River, the party divided into small bands,--no doubt in order to
subsist by hunting, for provisions were fast failing. The Williams
family were separated. Stephen was carried up the Connecticut; Samuel
and Eunice, with two younger children, were carried off in various
directions; while the wretched father, along with two small children of
one of his parishioners, was compelled to follow his Indian masters up
the valley of White River. One of the children--a little girl--was
killed on the next morning by her Caughnawaga owner, who was unable to
carry her.[66] On the next Sunday the minister was left in camp with one
Indian and the surviving child,--a boy of nine,--while the rest of the
party were hunting. "My spirit," he says, "was almost overwhelmed within
me." But he found comfort in the text, "Leave thy fatherless children, I
will preserve them alive." Nor was his hope deceived. His youngest
surviving child,--a boy of four,--though harshly treated by his owners,
was carried on their shoulders or dragged on a sledge to the end of the
journey. His youngest daughter--seven years old--was treated with great
kindness throughout. Samuel and Eunice suffered much from hunger, but
were dragged on sledges when too faint to walk. Stephen nearly starved
to death; but after eight months in the forest, he safely reached
Chambly with his Indian masters.

Of the whole band of captives, only about half ever again saw friends
and home. Seventeen broke down on the way and were killed; while David
Hoyt and Jacob Hix died of starvation at Coos Meadows, on the upper
Connecticut. During the entire march, no woman seems to have been
subjected to violence; and this holds true, with rare exceptions, in all
the Indian wars of New England. This remarkable forbearance towards
female prisoners, so different from the practice of many western tribes,
was p