the Indians entered the house, immediately after Mr. Dustan had quitted it, and found Mrs. Dustan, and her nurse, who was attempting to fly with the infant in her arms. Mrs. Dustan they ordered to rise instantly; and before she could completely dress herself, obliged her and her companion to quit the house, after they had plundered it and set it on fire. In company with several other captives, they began their march into the wilderness; she feeble, sick, terrified beyond measure, partially clad, one of her feet bare, and the season utterly unfit for comfortable travelling. The air was chilly and keen, and the earth covered, alternately, with snow and deep mud. Her conductors were unfeeling, insolent, and revengeful: murder was their glory, and torture their sport. Her infant was in her nurse’s arms; and infants were the customary victims of savage barbarity. The company had proceeded but a short distance, when an Indian, thinking it an incumbrance, took the child out of the nurse’s arms, and dashed its head against a tree. Such of the other captives as began to be weary, and lag, the Indians tomahawked. The slaughter was not an act of revenge or of cruelty; it was a mere convenience; an effort so familiar as not even to excite an emotion. Feeble as Mrs. Dustan was, both she and her nurse sustained, without yielding, the fatigue of the journey. Their intense distress for the death of the child, and of their companions, anxiety for those whom they had left behind, and unceasing terror for themselves, raised these unhappy women to such a degree of vigour, that notwithstanding their fatigue, their exposure to cold, their sufferance from hunger, and their sleeping on damp ground, under an inclement sky, they finished an expedition of about one hundred and fifty miles, without losing their spirits, or injuring their health. The _weekwarm_ to which they were conducted, and which belonged to the savage who had claimed them as his property, was inhabited by twelve persons. In the month of April this family set out, with their captives, for an Indian settlement still more remote; and informed them, that when they arrived at the settlement, they must be stripped, scourged, and run the gauntlet, naked, between two files of Indians, containing the whole number found in the settlement; for such, they declared, was the standing custom of their nation. This information made a deep impression on the minds of the captive women, and led them irresistibly to devise all the possible means of escape. On the 31st of the same month, very early in the morning, Mrs. Dustan, while the Indians were asleep, having awaked her nurse, and a fellow-prisoner (a youth taken some time before, from Worcester), despatched, with the assistance of her companions, ten of the twelve Indians; the other two escaped. With the scalps of these savages, they returned through the wilderness; and, having arrived safely at Haverhill, and afterwards at Boston, received a handsome