id waste, to mark
it naught remaining but trampled grain, and heaps of ashes, and remnants
of blackened and incinerated bones. By nightfall the party of prisoners
had begun a wild journey through the wilderness, whose horrors surpassed
any they had supposed to be humanly endurable.

Day after day, week after week, for more than a month, and much of the
time in winter weather, they toiled on, part of the way by boat, the
remainder of the journey on foot, crossing snow-clogged forest, and
tangled thicket and frozen morass, yet daring not to drop out for rest,
since to lag might mean to die. It was as though after some frightful
nightmare of suffering and despair that at length they reached the
villages of the Five Nations, located far to the east, at the foot of
the great waterway which Law and his family had ascended more than a
year before.

Yet if that which had gone before seemed like some bitter dream, surely
the day of awakening promised but little better hope. From village to
village, footsore and ill, they were hurried without rest, at each new
stopping place the central figures of a barbarous triumph; and nowhere
did they meet the representatives of either the French or the English
government, whose expected presence had constituted their one ground of
hope.

"Where is your big peace?" asked Teganisoris of Pembroke. "Where are the
head men of Corlaer? Who brings presents to the Iroquois, and who is to
tell us that Onontio has carried the pipe of peace to Corlaer? Here are
our villages as when we left them, and here again are we, save for the
absent ones who have been killed by your young men. It is no wonder that
my people are displeased."

Indeed those of the Iroquois who had remained at home clamored
continually that some of the prisoners should be given over to them.
Thus, in doubt, uncertainty and terror the party passed through the
villages, moving always eastward, until at length they arrived at the
fortified town where Teganisoris made his home, a spot toward the foot
of Lake Ontario, and not widely removed from that stupendous cataract
which, from the beginning of earth, had uplifted its thunderous
diapason here in the savage wilderness--Ontoneagrea, object of
superstitious awe among all the tribes.

Time hung heavy on the hands of the savages. It was winter, and the
parties had all returned from the war trails. The mutterings arose yet
more loudly among families who had lost most heavily in these W