CHAPTER XIII

NEWS OF MASSACRE-PARSON GAY PREACHES BAXTER'S SERMON-BAXTER THANKS HIM

FUNERAL

A MAN, in a misshapen soldier's hat, in a coat that had once been blue, seated on a rough horse caked with the sweat and dust of an August day, came riding into Roxbury and stopped in the open space around the "Parting Stone" in front of the meeting-house. For a week a sense of impending disaster, made up of hints and fears, fragments of intelligence put together in the light of imagination and of prophecy, had hung over the community. Then had come, almost as a relief, the definite intelligence of the capitulation. They knew it was a loss, a failure of far-reaching plans of defence; but it was not final-there were more men left and the king had money. They knew that the further the French came, the further they were from their supplies. It had been rumored that there was none too much to eat even in Montreal—that is, for the soldiersand that if the army had not taken the fort so soon as they did they would have had to go back to be fed. So there were consolations after all. The French had given good terms, acknowledging that the surrender had been made without dishonor. "The next time, with another general" They shook their heads ominously.

But neither the look of the man nor the horse betokened good news. The men who gathered around him were the friends, neighbors and old comrades of the men from whom he had come. For the whole countryside no news, good or

bad, could fail to concern a widening circle of the rejoicing and the grieving.

"Get your messengers ready," said he, "unless you wish to let the people who are waiting have another night's sleep before they are told. There is nothing they can do now but to bear it as best they can and pray God to help them. I am going to Hingham, but the news I carry will bring mourning to many another town-Brantry and Bridgewater and Pembroke, and many beside."

"Tell us, man! tell us! Stop your prating!"

"The men at Fort William Henry have been massacred, plundered, carried into captivity to suffer worse things. The sick and wounded were slaughtered in their beds, the women killed or carried off after their children were murdered before their eyes. Then the devils fell on the unarmed men and no one knows who were killed or where they have gone."

Indian atrocities were no news to many of the listeners from their own experience, and to many others familiar by tradition, but a burst of groans and execrations, not only at the cruelty of the savages, but the perfidy of the French, now overwhelmed the voice of the courier. As this subsided came thick and fast the enquiries for friends by name and company. "I cannot tell you,” said he. "No one knows yet. The bodies found do not account for all the missing. Some were probably burned. Despatches have gone to Boston that may tell more."

The tired messenger had only a scrap or two of chance information for a few persons, then mounted another horse and rode on his mission of sorrow.

The two sisters, the newly wedded, deserted wife and the staid matron with her little flock around her, were looking at the brilliant clouds over Fort Hill, hoping that their bright shining might be a token of better things to come; but just then from below them, in the haze and the dust, came the herald, and paused before them. They did not ask, but gazed with set faces at his gloomy visage. "I bring

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you no good news," said he. "The men at Fort William Henry have been, many of them, murdered, some were driven into the forest and have found their way back, and of others we have no tidings whatever."

"And where is Major Baxter ?"

"He was seen tied to a tree, and then, not long afterward, he had gone. No one can tell. Let us hope he may return, but we fear the worst."

Her grip tightened on her sister's hand, but she spoke no word. "And mine?" said Debby. "Did you hear aught of Lieutenant Bates?"

"Yes, I heard of him. He was not in the capitulation, for he had not got there. I heard of him on the way, but where he is now I cannot tell."

The express rider went on, and there were few houses to which he did not carry doubt and dread, if not despair.

The two women looked again at the sky: the brightness had gone and only a lurid red remained, deepening rapidly to the blackness of night. Days went on, new messengers came. Letters were published in the Gazette and the Post. It was known that many had succeeded in escaping and had come back to Fort Edward within a few days, and also that others had been purchased from the Indians by kindhearted Frenchmen and were held in captivity as Jeremiah Lincoln had been the year before; but there was no word from Baxter. One man said he had seen his body.

The ensign, notwithstanding his broken heart, had remained a good friend. He told the sisters that such captivity among the French was as light as humanity could make it; that the two husbands would probably appear in good health. But as more days went on and none among the returned men was Baxter, or had news of him, and none of the prisoners who had been lucky enough to get away from Montreal had heard of him, these consolations grew to seem illusory, hope changed to despair, and they could not think otherwise than that he had perished at the hands of his first captors, in whose hands several of the es

caped had seen him. The elder sister grew visibly older from day to day, but without utterly relinquishing the fading hope in her own mind. At last she consented that the rites of respect should be paid to her husband among the others who had died in the defence of their homes and liberties. Neither had word come from Joshua Bates. He was in safety when last heard from, and his duty did not call him directly into the conflict. As they knew now, this had ceased to be close at hand before he could have reached the scene, but whether his adventurous disposition might have carried him farther no one could say.

Mrs. Baxter sat in her pew at the side of the old meetinghouse, in sombre black, around her the three older children, and her sister in less profound mourning, indicating her regret for her brother-in-law, but not for her own husband. In other pews were the families of men who had not come back, and still more upon the benches which ran across the body of the church. An occasional sob came from some of the younger women as the chapters were read from the Bible and as Mr. Shute prayed, not for the souls of the departed, but that the affliction might be sanctified to the living; that they might so live that when the summons came, in peace or war, they would be assured of a blessed hereafter as those who had died fighting for their homes and their king. "Let me die the death of the righteous and my end be like his."

Mrs. Baxter sat motionless, with her eyes cast down, without a sound of grief.

Then arose in the pulpit, looking down upon his flock, the reverend form of the pastor, the friend and comforter of the afflicted who had been for so many years, and destined to be for so many more, their refuge in adversity, their consoler in sorrow and their guide in prosperity. “I take my text," said he in a voice broken with emotion, but yet firm in the faith, "from the Second Book of Samuel, xviii, 33. 'And the king was much moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept; and as he went, this

he said, O, my son Absalom; my son Absalom. Would to God I had died for thee, O, Absalom, my son, my son.'

"These words express the feelings natural to us all when we see the young cut off before what we think their time, but we cannot tell what it may be in the reckoning of the Lord. We are come into the sanctuary to-day not only to worship as usual, but to lament the untimely, so it seems to us, death of a useful citizen, a pillar of this church, the comfort and support of his family and friends, and of several others also to be mourned.

"These men who have lost their lives-not upon the battlefield, but, far worse, in a wicked and cruel slaughter— were none of them my sons in the flesh, for, as you know, my son is as yet safe, but they were dear to me, especially he who was their leader, whose grandfather, the companion of my boyhood, was allowed in the mercy of God to live out a long term of life in honor and usefulness, dear like my own, as nearly as it is given to weak human nature to feel for any but their very own. We cannot look upon our present loss as in any way a judgment for our sins or for his, for he had been doing his duty faithfully and exerted himself to the utmost for the protection of the Colony, and of the men entrusted to his care. He had been a faithful subject of the king. It is probably a blessing in disguise sent to teach us that we should always be ready, and, in the great battle with sin which lasts from the cradle to the grave, should never be taken by surprise."

The worthy doctor improved the occasion for an hour in showing his hearers and the mourners that they should not grieve overmuch, but consider the affliction a lesson, though not a judgment.

"That so faithful a man should be slain in so terrible a manner in the midst of his usefulness, while the Prophet of Bethel, if he was a true one, was not so bold in God's cause, still lived when he was old, in plenty and at ease, what an awful reverence toward the blessed and only Potentate who worketh all things according to the counsel