r of
New York, wrote that he had heard through spies that Deerfield was again
to be attacked, and a message to the same effect came from Peter
Schuyler, who had received intimations of the danger from Mohawks lately
on a visit to their Caughnawaga relatives. During the autumn the alarm
was so great that the people took refuge within the palisades, and the
houses of the enclosure were crowded with them; but the panic had now
subsided, and many, though not all, had returned to their homes. They
were reassured by the presence of twenty volunteers from the villages
below, whom, on application from the minister, Williams, the General
Court had sent as a garrison to Deerfield, where they were lodged in the
houses of the villagers. On the night when Hertel de Rouville and his
band lay hidden among the pines there were in all the settlement a
little less than three hundred souls, of whom two hundred and
sixty-eight were inhabitants, twenty were yeomen soldiers of the
garrison, two were visitors from Hatfield, and three were negro slaves.
They were of all ages,--from the Widow Allison, in her eighty-fifth
year, to the infant son of Deacon French, aged four weeks.[58]

Heavy snows had lately fallen and buried the clearings, the meadow, and
the frozen river to the depth of full three feet. On the northwestern
side the drifts were piled nearly to the top of the palisade fence, so
that it was no longer an obstruction to an active enemy.

As the afternoon waned, the sights and sounds of the little border
hamlet were, no doubt, like those of any other rustic New England
village at the end of a winter day,--an ox-sledge creaking on the frosty
snow as it brought in the last load of firewood, boys in homespun
snowballing one another in the village street, farmers feeding their
horses and cattle in the barns, a matron drawing a pail of water with
the help of one of those long well-sweeps still used in some remote
districts, or a girl bringing a pail of milk from the cow-shed. In the
houses, where one room served as kitchen, dining-room, and parlor, the
housewife cooked the evening meal, children sat at their bowls of mush
and milk, and the men of the family, their day's work over, gathered
about the fire, while perhaps some village coquette sat in the corner
with fingers busy at the spinning-wheel, and ears intent on the
stammered wooings of her rustic lover. Deerfield kept early hours, and
it is likely that by nine o'clock all were in t