to the deck of the Frenchman, and George Stevens heard the order given to cease firing.

As the dense clouds of smoke rolled away, the French flag was lowered, and the red cross with the British lion was mounted to its place. George grew faint and bewildered. He looked about for

Elmer, for he had not seen him since the attack began. All of a sudden he felt a twinge of pain in his right side. He had been wounded in the affray; but in the excitement he had not noticed Now the reaction was overwhelming.

it.

"Elmer! Elmer!" he feebly called, and sank fainting to the deck.

When he regained consciousness, he was lying in his bunk, his brother at his side, alive and unhurt. He looked out over the ship's side and saw the prize near them. Though they had suffered greatly, they were not nearly so cut to pieces as was the enemy. One of their masts had been shot away, their sails were in rags, and the hull was badly battered.

Many of the valuables on board the prize were being removed to the deck of the privateer, and among them was a bell, which had been bought for the church of St. Louis at Caughnawaga.

"It will serve for a different worship," said George Stevens as he sat on the deck gazing at the bell.

He little dreamed of the misery which that chapel bell would occasion himself.

many

The ship put in to Boston with her prize. Here of the wounded were left, and among them George Stevens, whose side had by no means healed. "A voyage at sea would be dangerous for you, brave lad; remain on shore. You have friends and relatives here, who will care for you," said the kind-hearted captain.

Charles Stevens, who had formally resided at Salem but had removed to Boston, being a distant relative of the Stevens family in Virginia, and also being under some obligations to Robert Stevens, the father of George, induced the lad to make his house his home, which George consented to do. He had relatives living at Deerfield, who next summer persuaded the roving youth to come there and spend a few months with them.

The ship on which his brother had sailed had not put into port since its departure. Though his parents had written him several times to return to his home at Williamsburg, Virginia, he decided to go to Deerfield for a few months and learn something of northern New England.

As soon as war had been declared between France and New England, in 1702, Governor Dudley, realizing how essential it was to secure the aid of the Indians, with some magistrates of Mas·

sachusetts held a conference with the eastern Indians at Casco, in June, 1703. With well-feigned friendship, the savages renewed former treaties. They declared that the French had asked them to take up the hatchet against the English, but that they had refused, because their friendship for the people of Massachusetts was "as firm as the mountain, and as enduring as the sun and moon."

Some of those hardy frontiersmen believed in their sincerity; but others shook their heads in doubt and asserted that it was their opinion that the savages, under the tutelage of the French, were playing a treacherous part. No one was long left in doubt, for, only a few weeks after the conference, the very Indians who had participated in it fell with remorseless fury upon the frontier settlers of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, scattering solemn treaties to the winds and supplanting them with death and terror. From the Merrimac to the Penobscot, the tribes desolated the border settlements, murdering the innocent, plundering the thrifty and laying cabin, mansion and village in ruin. Not even the benefactors of the Indians, the Friends, or Quakers, were spared. They respected "neither the milk-white brows of the grave and ancient, nor the mournful cries of the tender infants."

This treachery was charged by the English to

the French Jesuits. Already this order had incurred the intense hatred of the New Englanders, because many circumstances pointed to Jesuit influence as fanning the flame of hatred between the English and Indians.

Bomaseen, a sachem, who visited Boston, informed the English that the Jesuits had taught the Indians that Jesus Christ was a Frenchman; that his mother, the Virgin Mary, was a Frenchwoman; that the English had murdered him; that he had gone up to heaven to plead for mankind, and that he who would receive favor must espouse the cause of his countrymen, the French, in the pending quarrel.

No doubt, Bomaseen, who was a crafty Indian, invented this story; but it was believed by the colonists. The legislatures of New York and Massachusetts passed laws for the expulsion of the Jesuits from their provinces; but nothing could diminish their influence over the Indians. Warriors from Canada joined those of the St. Lawrence, and in their murderous expeditions they were frequently accompanied by French troops and ecclesiastics.

The priests are said to have received the confession of Indian and white man alike, and given absolution for their sins, before beginning their bloody work. A day was appointed for confes

sion, and Father Rale of Norridgewock says of the Indians:

"I exhorted them to maintain the same interest in religion as if they were at home; to observe

carefully the laws of war;

to practise no cruelty; to kill no one except in the heat of battle, and to treat their prisoners humanely."

A savage nature, however, cannot be wholly changed. by partial civilization. It takes many generations to drive the barbarian from his soul, and the instructions of Father Rale were unheeded.

The little French chapel of St. Louis was waiting its bell. It had two years and a half before sent to France for a bell to call its people together to worship God; . but it came not. Late in the year of 1703, a sailor who had escaped an English prison returned to Canada and told the story of the capture of his ship on board of which was the chapel bell. It was ascertained that the bell had been taken to

FATHER RALE.