en burnt,
and fourteen men of Chelmsford, the next settlement, concluding it had
been done by the Wamesit Red-skins, went thither, called them out of
their wigwams, and then fired at them, killing a lad and five women and
children. After all, the fire had been caused by some skulking heathen
Indians; but though the Government obtained the arrest of the murderers,
the jury would not find them guilty. The Wamesit Indians fled into the
forest, and sent a piteous letter:--"We are not sorry for what we leave
behind, but we are sorry that the English have driven us from our praying
to God and from our teacher. We did begin to understand praying to God a
_little_." They were invited back, but were afraid to come till cold and
hunger drove them to their old abode, and then the indefatigable Eliot
and Gookin visited them, and did all in their power to bring about a
better feeling towards them in Chelmsford.

This whole autumn and winter--a terribly severe one--seems to have been
spent by these good men in trying to heal the strifes between the English
and the Indians. Wanalanset had fled, true to his father's policy of
never resisting, and they were sent to invite him back again; but when he
returned, he found that the maize grounds of his settlement had been
ploughed up by the English and sown with rye, so that his tribe had most
scanty subsistence.

Several settlements of Christians were deported to Deer Island. One
large party had been made prisoners by their heathen countrymen and had
managed to escape, but when met with wandering in the woods by a party of
English soldiers, were plundered of the little the heathens had left
them, in especial of a pewter cup, their communion plate, which Mr. Eliot
had given them, and which was much treasured by their native pastor. The
General interfered in their behalf, but could not protect them from much
ill-usage. The teacher was sent with his old father and young children
to Boston, where Mr. Eliot saw and cheered him before he was conveyed to
Deer Island. There, in December, Eliot, with Gookin and other friends,
frequently visited the Indians, now five hundred in number, and found
them undergoing many privations, but patient, resigned, and unmurmuring.
The snow was four feet deep in the woods by the 10th of December that
year, and the exertion and exposure of travelling, either on snow-shoes
or sledges, must have been tremendous to a man of Mr. Eliot's age; but he
never seems