strength
almost spent, was permitted to rest a few moments at the top; and as the
other prisoners passed by in turn, he questioned each for news of his
wife. He was not left long in suspense. She had fallen from
weakness in fording the stream, but gained her feet again, and, drenched
in the icy current, struggled to the farther bank, when the savage who
owned her, finding that she could not climb the hill, killed her with
one stroke of his hatchet. Her body was left on the snow till a few of
her townsmen, who had followed the trail, found it a day or two after,
carried it back to Deerfield, and buried it in the churchyard.

[Illustration: _The Return from Deerfield._

Drawn by Howard Pyle.]

On the next day the Indians killed an infant and a little girl of eleven
years; on the day following, Friday, they tomahawked a woman, and on
Saturday four others. This apparent cruelty was in fact a kind of mercy.
The victims could not keep up with the party, and the death-blow saved
them from a lonely and lingering death from cold and starvation. Some of
the children, when spent with the march, were carried on the backs of
their owners,--partly, perhaps, through kindness, and partly because
every child had its price.

On the fourth day of the march they came to the mouth of West River,
which enters the Connecticut a little above the present town of
Brattleboro'. Some of the Indians were discontented with the
distribution of the captives, alleging that others had got more than
their share; on which the whole troop were mustered together, and some
changes of ownership were agreed upon. At this place dog-trains and
sledges had been left, and these served to carry their wounded, as well
as some of the captive children. Williams was stripped of the better
part of his clothes, and others given him instead, so full of vermin
that they were a torment to him through all the journey. The march now
continued with pitiless speed up the frozen Connecticut, where the
recent thaw had covered the ice with slush and water ankle-deep.

On Sunday they made a halt, and the minister was permitted to preach a
sermon from the text, "Hear, all people, and behold my sorrow: my
virgins and my young men are gone into captivity." Then amid the ice,
the snow, the forest, and the savages, his forlorn flock joined their
voices in a psalm.[64] On Monday guns were heard from the rear, and the
Indians and their allies, in great alarm, bound their prisoners f