over all our enemies." However great as was their joy,
so great had been their labours that twenty-four of their number were so
overpowered by fatigue that they fell asleep on their moonlight march
through the valley of the Dora, and were captured by the enemy, so that
these twenty-four added to the forty previously lost in the passage of the
Jaillon, diminished the full measure of their satisfaction. Still they
press forward, and as the light of another day dawns upon them (the ninth
of their journey and the Lord's Day) they had climbed the summit of Mont
Sci, and from it looked with beating hearts upon the peaks of their own
loved mountains. Indeed it was only the valley of Pragela (a district
closely associated with their own in faith and worship until his so-called
Christian majesty banished the profession of the gospel from its
boundaries) that interposed between them and the object of their march. On
this Pisgah top Arnaud gathers his men around him, and beneath the roof of
heaven and amidst the walls of surrounding mountain slopes, glistening with
the brightness of the rising sun, pours out the psalm of glad thanksgiving,
and offers the prayer of the contrite heart.

On Tuesday, August 27th, 1689, the brave Vaudois, who had crossed the lake
of Geneva only eleven days before, now set foot in the first village of
their own territory, viz., Balsille, at the north-west extremity of the
valley of San Martino. This was indeed a solemn moment, recalling the
successful labours of the past and suggesting the difficulties and
anxieties of the future. Arnaud would doubtless examine minutely into the
condition and number of his men, and as he did so painfully consider the
losses he had sustained, reducing the patriot band to about seven hundred
men. This review is necessary in order to explain the otherwise sanguinary
character of the determination to refuse all quarter to the troops which
attacked them in their endeavours to regain possession of their native
valleys. Hence the Vaudois put to death the guard on the Alps of the Pis,
and at Balsille; this was the greatest number they did so treat. From
Balsille Arnaud led his men into the valley of Prali, and subdivided his
army into two divisions. On reaching the hamlet of Guigot, they rejoiced to
find their temple still standing, and purging it of the superstitious
ornaments introduced by the Papists, these seven hundred patriot warriors
laid down their arms and sang the 74th