Shortly before the close of the war Belle Boyd was captured and imprisoned. She escaped and made her way to England. In London she attracted the attention of George Augustus Sala, the famous writer. She had been married in the meantime and her husband, Lieutenant Hardage of the Confederate army, was among those taken prisoner by the Union forces.

While abroad she became financially embarrassed; indeed, at one time she was reduced to actual want. A stranger in a strange land, sick in mind and body, she was in a pitiable condition. Mr. Sala wrote a letter to the London Times explaining her sad state and roundly abusing the United States Government which had, he said, not only imprisoned her husband but was also “barbarous enough to place him in irons.”

British sympathies were very strongly with the South at that time, and as a result of this plea provision was made for the immediate wants of the famous spy. After the war she disappeared from the public gaze, and some years later died in comparative obscurity.

III
THE INDIAN SCOUT WHO WAS THE HERO OF KING PHILIP’S WAR

It is a curious fact that Job Kattenanit, one of the Praying Indians of Deer Island, in Boston Harbor, should have emerged from King Philip’s war with more glory than any other man, either white or red, who participated in that bloody contest.

Like the historic Biblical character from whom he received his name, Job was a sorely afflicted man. He was among the first group of Indians in that section of the United States to accept the Christian religion, and it was this fact, and in order to distinguish them from the other red men, that Kattenanit and his companions received the designation of the Praying Indians.

It is regrettable to record, however, that the excesses of some of the other natives had caused an indiscriminate hatred of the Indians throughout New England. They were regarded as wild beasts who should be shot and killed without mercy. It was while this feeling was at its height that Job Kattenanit and eleven of his companions were arrested on a charge of being concerned in the murder of seven white men. They were captured in the town of Lancaster and brought to Boston, tied “neck and neck,” as the practice was in those primitive days. The evidence against them was of the flimsiest character, and it was only through the efforts of Captain John Gookin, a magistrate who felt a special interest in the Indians, that their lives were spared and they were condemned to imprisonment on Deer Island.

In the meantime King Philip, the Indian chieftain, was spreading terror among the white people. He was jealous of their gradual encroachment upon what he conceived to be his domain and he planned to destroy them. He was a man of sagacity, although said to be wanting in physical courage, and he gradually combined all of the Indian tribes into one strong confederation and waited for a chance to strike the decisive blow.

It came at Swansea on Sunday, July 4, 1675. The settlers were going to church when the Indians suddenly burst upon them. But these pioneers were both pious and prepared, and taking up arms they routed their assailants. Philip and his warriors then hunted the settlers in the Connecticut valley, burning down their homes and subjecting the people to the most atrocious forms of cruelty. In the spring the war broke out anew along a frontier of three hundred miles and to within twenty miles of Boston. The Indians had remained quiet for a long time after the initial outbreak—so quiet that the whites were thoroughly alarmed. They knew the ruthless nature of their foes and they feared the consequences to the women and children if they should be taken unawares.