dishes, four earthen pots, two iron pots, seven trays, two
buckets, some pieces of wooden-ware, a skillet, and a frying-pan. In the
inventory of the patriarchal Francis Littlefield, who died in 1712, we
find the exceptional items of one looking-glass, two old chairs, and two
old books. Such of the family as had no bed slept on hay or straw, and
no provision for the toilet is recorded.[46]

On the tenth of August, 1703, these rugged borderers were about their
usual callings, unconscious of danger,--the women at their household
work, the men in the fields or on the more distant salt-marshes. The
wife of Thomas Wells had reached the time of her confinement, and her
husband had gone for a nurse. Some miles east of Wells's cabin lived
Stephen Harding,--hunter, blacksmith, and tavern-keeper, a sturdy,
good-natured man, who loved the woods, and whose frequent hunting trips
sometimes led him nearly to the White Mountains. Distant gunshots were
heard from the westward, and his quick eye presently discovered Indians
approaching, on which he told his frightened wife to go with their
infant to a certain oak-tree beyond the creek while he waited to learn
whether the strangers were friends or foes.

That morning several parties of Indians had stolen out of the dismal
woods behind the houses and farms of Wells, and approached different
dwellings of the far-extended settlement at about the same time. They
entered the cabin of Thomas Wells, where his wife lay in the pains of
childbirth, and murdered her and her two small children. At the same
time they killed Joseph Sayer, a neighbor of Wells, with all his family.

Meanwhile Stephen Harding, having sent his wife and child to a safe
distance, returned to his blacksmith's shop, and, seeing nobody, gave a
defiant whoop; on which four Indians sprang at him from the bushes. He
escaped through a back-door of the shop, eluded his pursuers, and found
his wife and child in a cornfield, where the woman had fainted with
fright. They spent the night in the woods, and on the next day, after a
circuit of nine miles, reached the palisaded house of Joseph Storer.

They found the inmates in distress and agitation. Storer's daughter
Mary, a girl of eighteen, was missing. The Indians had caught her, and
afterwards carried her prisoner to Canada. Samuel Hill and his family
were captured, and the younger children butchered. But it is useless to
record the names and fate of the sufferers. Thirty-nine in al