I.
Lucy Keyes was the daughter of Robert Keyes, who lived in the town of Princeton, in Massachusetts, about the year 1755. At the age of two and a half or three years, she disappeared one night at sunset, and was never afterwards heard of by her parents. Her father spent the greater part of his life in a fruitless search for her among the various tribes of Indians; and her mother lost her reason in the contemplation of the unknown fate which had befallen her little daughter. This is an account of the little girl's disappearance, and the elucidation of a mystery which, for three-quarters of a century, baffled all search. The story is derived from traditions in the neighborhood, from allusions to Lucy in the local histories, and from the dying statement of a chief actor in the tragedy.
The fourth settler in the town was Robert Keyes. It is well known that our ancestors had frequent trouble with the Indians, and that white people were stolen, to be either put to death or returned to their friends for a ransom. Lancaster had been burned seventy-five years before, and Mrs. Rowlandson, the minister's wife, was carried into captivity. She was taken to New Hampshire, and after wandering with her captors thirty days or more, she was returned to the foot of Mount Wachusett; and on a rock near the shore of Wachusett Lake, where the chiefs held their councils, she was purchased of her captors by John Hoar, an ancestor of the distinguished Senator Hoar, for thirty dollars in silver, together with some trinkets and provisions. King Philip himself was present, and opposed the release of Mrs. Rowlandson; but even his influence did not overcome the cupidity of the petty chief who held her. From this circumstance the rock is known as Redemption Rock. It has been purchased by Senator Hoar, and its southern face now bears an appropriate inscription to commemorate the release, and the courage and diplomacy of John Hoar.
The Inscription.
"Upon this rock, May 2d, 1676, was made the agreement for the ransom of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson of Lancaster, between the Indians and John Hoar of Concord.
"King Philip was with the Indians, but refused his consent."
It was on Pine Hill, a mile or two south of this rock, and at the eastern base of the mountain, that Robert Keyes cut down the forest, and made a home for his little family. The spot is picturesque and sightly. To the north, and seen through the clearing, nestles Lake Wachusett among its woody banks; while far in the horizon are seen the New Hampshire hills, and beyond, the blue summits of the White Mountains; to the east the landscape stretches away, diversified with lake and valley and woody slope, till it is lost to sight in the dimly distant line of the misty ocean; to the south is the dome-like knoll of Pine Hill covered with evergreen trees; and on the west rises the steep acclivity of Mount Wachusett, while between these two may be seen the hills, twenty miles away, that divide the waters of the Connecticut from the streams that supply the Nashua and the Merrimac.
On a sunny afternoon in summer Mr. Keyes and his boys were in the field some distance from the house, picking up logs and burning them with the stumps and brush, to enlarge the farm. Around the house were fields of corn and flax and waving grain. The cows and sheep were browsing in the edge of the woods. Mrs. Keyes was spinning flax in front of the cabin door, seated on a low, home-made stool upon the hard and smoothly swept ground. Within, the neatly kept log cabin had a rough floor strewn with white sand. On one side of the single large room there was a settee stuffed with shavings of birch-bark; and a cat lay curled up and dozing in the sun, which streamed in through the open lattice that took the place of a window. Around the room were the rough tables and the benches which used to serve as furniture in such primitive dwellings. Shelves and cupboards were fastened upon the wall. Dried apples and pumpkins, pieces of venison and smoked ham, hung upon poles at the top of the room. The wide fireplace and large, open chimney stood at one side. The embers smouldered between the great andirons, ready to be kindled for preparing the evening meal. Aloft, and reached by a ladder that rested against an opening, was the chamber where the family used to sleep. This was the happy home of Robert Keyes, where comfort and busy contentment reigned.
On the afternoon in question two older daughters were at play with little Lucy under the trellis of hop-vines that shaded their mother from the sun. Those were not the days of carpets or of painted floors. Neat housewives would sprinkle the boards with clean white sand; and this, under the tread of feet, would scour the wood and then be swept away. The brooms were made by stripping the sapling birch and tying these strips in a bundle over the end of the stick, or by tying cedar or hemlock boughs at the end of a pointed handle. Housekeepers were unacquainted with boughten brushes and corn-brooms and sweeping-machines.
At their mother's call the two older girls started with a bucket to go to the shore of the lake to fetch some sand for the floor. Little Lucy, thus left alone, soon tired of her play, and wandered away among the vines and the corn around the door, till she came to the path that led to the lake. She followed her sisters a long way behind them, and was never again seen by her friends.