of the despairing fugitive were disturbed by the crash of
musketry, the whistling of bullets, and the shout and the onset of his
foes. He leaped from his couch of leaves, and, like a deer, bounded
from hummock to hummock in the swamp. It so happened that he ran
directly upon an ambush which Captain Church had warily established.
An Englishman and the Indian deserter, whose name was Alderman, stood
behind a large tree, with their guns cocked and primed. As Philip,
bewildered and unconscious of his peril, drew near, the Englishman
took deliberate aim at him when he was but at the distance of a few
yards, and sprung his lock. The night dews of the swamp had moistened
the powder, and his gun missed fire. The life of Philip was thus
prolonged for one half of a minute. The traitor Alderman then eagerly
directed his gun against the chief to whom but a few hours before he
had been in subjection. A sharp report rang through the forest, and
two bullets, for the gun was double charged, passed almost directly
through the heart of the heroic warrior. For an instant the majestic
frame of the chieftain, as he stood erect, quivered from the shock,
and then he fell heavy and stone dead in the mud and water of the
swamp.

Alderman, delighted with his exploit, ran eagerly to inform Captain
Church that he had shot King Philip. Church ordered him to be
perfectly silent about it, that his men might more vigorously pursue
the remaining warriors. For some time the pursuit and the carnage
continued. Captain Church then, by a concerted signal, called his army
together, and informed them of the death of their formidable foe. The
tidings were received with a simultaneous shout of exultation, which,
repeated again and again, reverberated through the solitudes of the
forests. The whole army then advanced to the spot where the sovereign
of the Wampanoags lay gory in death. They had but little reverence for
an Indian, and, seizing the body, they dragged it, as if it had been
the carcass of a wild beast, through the mud to an upland slope, where
the ground was dry. Here, for a time, they gazed with exultation upon
the great trophy of their victory, and spurned the dishonored body as
if it had been a wolf or a panther which had been destroying their
families and their flocks. Captain Church then said,

"Forasmuch as he has caused many an Englishman's body to lie unburied
and to rot above the ground, not one of his bones shall be buried."

An old Indi