"What do I ask?" he said; "I ask but one thing, baptism. Make haste, for the time is short."

I wished to question him as to the faith, so as not to administer a sacrament with precipitation; but I found him perfectly instructed, having been already received among the catechumens in the Huron country. I therefore baptized him, to his and my own great satisfaction. Though I had done so by a kind of stratagem, using the water which I had brought for him to drink, the Iroquois nevertheless perceived it. The captains were at once informed, and, with angry threats, drove me from the hut, and then began to torture him as before.

The following morning they roasted him alive. Then, because I had baptized him, they brought all his members, one by one, into the cabin where I was. Before my eyes they skinned and ate the feet and hands. The husband of the mistress of the lodge threw at my feet the dead man's head, and left it there a long while, reproaching me with what I had done, alluding to the baptism and prayers which I had offered with him, and saying: "And what indeed have thy enchantments helped him? Have they perhaps delivered him from death?"

III
NARRATIVE OF MRS. MARY ROWLANDSON
Who was Taken Captive by the Wamponoags Under King Philip, in 1676.
Written by Herself.

Mary Rowlandson was the wife of the Reverend Joseph Rowlandson, the first minister of Lancaster, Massachusetts. On the tenth of February, 1676, during King Philip's War, the Indians destroyed Lancaster, and took her captive. She was treated with gross cruelty, and was sold by her Narragansett captor to a sagamore named Quannopin. After nearly three months of starving and wretchedness she was ransomed for about eighty dollars which was contributed by some women of Boston.

Her own account of her captivity, originally published in 1682, is here given with the omission of nothing but certain reflections that are not essential to the narrative. (Editor.)

On the 10th of February, 1676, came the Indians with great numbers[6] upon Lancaster. Their first coming was about sun-rising. Hearing the noise of some guns, we looked out; several houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to heaven.

There were five persons taken in one house. The father and mother, and a sucking child, they knocked on the head; the other two they took and carried away alive. There were two others, who, being out of their garrison upon occasion, were set upon; one was knocked on the head, the other escaped. Another there was, who, running along, was shot and wounded, and fell down; he begged of them his life, promising them money, as they told me, but they would not hearken to him, but knocked him on the head, stripped him naked, and split open his bowels. Another, seeing many of the Indians about his barn, ventured and went out, but was quickly shot down. There were three others belonging to the same garrison who were killed. The Indians getting up on the roof of the barn, had advantage to shoot down upon them over their fortification. Thus these murderous wretches went on burning and destroying all before them.

At length they came and beset our house, and quickly it was the dolefulest day that ever mine eyes saw. The house stood upon the edge of a hill; some of the Indians got behind the hill, others into the barn, and others behind anything that would shelter them; from all which places they shot against the house, so that the bullets seemed to fly like hail, and quickly they wounded one man among us, then another, and then a third.

About two hours, according to my observation in that amazing time, they had been about the house before they prevailed to fire it, which they did with flax and hemp which they brought out of the barn, and there being no defence about the house, only two flankers at two opposite corners, and one of them not finished; they fired it once, and one ventured out and quenched it, but they quickly fired it again, and that took.