re a little while ago as wild and
surly as you are now. By the time you have been one day with
me, you will love me too, and be as brisk as any of them.'

"And it proved so; for there was none of them but, after
they had been a little while with him, and seen his
behavior, and how cheerful and successful his men were,
would be as ready to pilot him to any place where the
Indians dwelt or haunted, though their own fathers or
nearest relations should be among them, as any of his own
men."

Such a character we can not but despise, and yet such, with
exceptions, was the character of the common Indian. That magnanimity
which at times has shed immortal brilliance upon humanity is a rare
virtue, even in civilized life; in the savage it is still more rare.

Philip, in the retreat to which he had now escaped, was again betrayed
by one of his renegade countrymen. The English, numbering sixteen
hundred, immediately resumed active hostilities, and after having
ravaged the country directly around them, burning some wigwams,
putting some Indians to death, and taking many captives, broke up
their encampment and commenced their march. It was early in February
that Major Winslow put his army in motion to pursue Philip. As the
English drew near the swamp, Philip, conscious of his inability to
oppose so formidable a force, immediately set his wigwams on fire,
and, with all his warriors, disappeared in the depths of the
wilderness. As it was entirely uncertain in what direction the savages
would emerge from the forest to kindle anew the flames of war, the
troops retraced their steps toward Boston. The Connecticut soldiers
had already returned to their homes.

On the 10th of February, 1676, the Indians, with whoop and yell, burst
from the forest upon the beautiful settlement of Lancaster. This was
one of the most remote of the frontier towns, some fifty miles west of
Boston, on the Nashua River. The plantation, ten miles in length and
eight in breadth, had been purchased of the Nashaway Indians, with the
stipulation that the English should not molest the Indians in their
hunting, fishing, or planting places. For several years the colonists
and the Indians lived together in entire harmony, mutually benefiting
each other. There were between fifty and sixty families in the town,
embracing nearly three hundred inhabitants. They had noticed some
suspicious circumstances on the part of the Indians