ins. Though nearly crazed by this catastrophe they
knew that their own lives were in hourly peril, and they wished to live
until they could punish the savages for this crime. After burying the
bodies, they started east across the hills, leaving a letter on birch
bark in a cleft stick at the mouth of Chartiers creek, in which the
tragedy was recounted.

This letter was afterward found by trappers. The men themselves were
never heard from, and it is believed that they, too, fell at the hands of
the Indians. Old settlers used to affirm that on summer nights the cries
of the murdered innocents could be heard in the little valley where the
cabin stood, and when storms were coming up these cries were often
blended with the yells of savages. More impressive are the death
lights--the will-o'-the-wisps--that wander over the scene of the tragedy,
and up and down the neighboring slopes. These apparitions are said to be
the spirits of husband and wife seeking each other, or going together in
search of their children; but some declare that in their upward streaming
rays it can readily be seen that they are the scalps of the slain. Two of
them have a golden hue, and these are the scalps of the children. From
beneath them drops of red seem to distil on the grass and are found to
have bedewed the flowers on the following morning.

THE CONSECRATION OF WASHINGTON

In 1773 some of the Pietist monks were still living in their rude
monastery whose ruins are visible on the banks of the Wissahickon. Chief
among these mystics was an old man who might have enjoyed the wealth and
distinction warranted by a title had he chosen to remain in Germany, but
he had forsworn vanities, and had come to the new world to pray, to rear
his children, and to live a simple life. Some said he was an alchemist,
and many believed him to be a prophet. The infrequent wanderer beside the
romantic river had seen lights burning in the window of his cell and had
heard the solemn sound of song and prayer. On a winter night, when snow
lay untrodden about the building and a sharp air stirred in the trees
with a sound like harps, the old man sat in a large room of the place,
with his son and daughter, waiting. For a prophecy had run that on that
night, at the third hour of morning, the Deliverer would present himself.
In a dream was heard a voice, saying, "I will send a deliverer to the new
world who shall save my people from bondage, as my Son saved them from
spiri