It was many days before Seth recovered from what he had endured at the hands of the Indians, and some of his injuries left scars which he bore for the remainder of his life.
At Montreal he found a number of his fellow-countrymen in the same plight as himself. They were fairly well treated, but of course kept under constant surveillance, and allowed little liberty of movement, so that their life soon became very monotonous, and each one of them cherished his own hopes of escape.
Now and again attempts were made, but they proved for the most part failures, the vigilance of the French and the incessant activity of the Indians rendering it wellnigh impossible to get safely away.
Of course Seth had no sooner recovered his strength than he likewise set his ingenuity to work upon the problem of regaining his freedom, but rack his brains as he might he could devise no scheme that seemed feasible, while the days grew into weeks, and the weeks into months of maddening monotony.
"I believe I'll go out of my mind if I don't get free soon," he said to one of his companions in captivity. "Just to think of all that's going on, and we have no hand in it. We might as well be dead and buried for all the good we are."
No wonder, indeed, if this forced inaction told hard upon the prisoners, and particularly upon those of them like Seth, whose delight it was to be in active service no matter how dangerous, as in their durance vile there reached them rumors of the tremendous effort England was putting forth to conquer Canada, and stirring accounts of the vast fleet which was pushing its way up the St. Lawrence River for the taking of Quebec. Nearly the whole force of the colony had been brought together at the threatened capital, where both Vaudreuil and Montcalm were making all possible preparations to meet the invaders, and Seth raged against the fate which kept him out of the arena of action, until at last he grew so desperate as to be ready to seize upon the wildest scheme for escape.
Such was his mood when all unexpectedly there came to him the chance he craved. During the early days of his imprisonment he had had the opportunity of doing a service for the wife of one of his guards, and thereby won her gratitude.
She had come from his own Province, and in spite of having lived many years in Canada her heart still held a warm corner for her countrymen. Although Seth knew nothing of it he had been much in the good woman's mind, and she was possessed with the idea of enabling him to escape, but wisely kept her own counsel about it until the opportunity offered. Then she surprised him by taking him aside, and saying in a significant tone:
"Are you tired of being a prisoner here?"
"Of course I am," responded Seth, emphatically. "Tired to death of it. I don't know what I'll do if I can't manage to get out of this somehow."