ve discouraged him, for he made no
further attempt to convert the intractable heretic.

The direct and simple narrative of Williams is plainly the work of an
honest and courageous man. He was the most important capture of the
year; and the governor, hearing that he was at St. Francis, despatched a
canoe to request the Jesuits of the mission to send him to Montreal.
Thither, therefore, his masters carried him, expecting, no doubt, a good
price for their prisoner. Vaudreuil, in fact, bought him, exchanged his
tattered clothes for good ones, lodged him in his house, and, in the
words of Williams, "was in all respects relating to my outward man
courteous and charitable to admiration." He sent for two of the
minister's children who were in the town, bought his eldest daughter
from the Indians, and promised to do what he could to get the others out
of their hands. His youngest son was bought by a lady of the place, and
his eldest by a merchant. His youngest daughter, Eunice, then seven or
eight years old, was at the mission of St. Louis, or Caughnawaga.
Vaudreuil sent a priest to conduct Williams thither and try to ransom
the child. But the Jesuits of the mission flatly refused to let him
speak to or see her. Williams says that Vaudreuil was very angry at
hearing of this; and a few days after, he went himself to Caughnawaga
with the minister. This time the Jesuits, whose authority within their
mission seemed almost to override that of the governor himself, yielded
so far as to permit the father to see his child, on condition that he
spoke to no other English prisoner. He talked with her for an hour,
exhorting her never to forget her catechism, which she had learned by
rote. Vaudreuil and his wife afterwards did all in their power to
procure her ransom; but the Indians, or the missionaries in their name,
would not let her go. "She is there still," writes Williams two years
later, "and has forgotten to speak English." What grieved him still
more, Eunice had forgotten her catechism.

While he was at Montreal, his movements were continually watched, lest
he should speak to other prisoners and prevent their conversion. He
thinks these precautions were due to the priests, whose constant
endeavor it was to turn the captives, or at least the younger and more
manageable among them, into Catholics and Canadians. The governor's
kindness towards him never failed, though he told him that he should not
be set free till the English gave up