Of the two priests, the giant, Jean de Brébeuf, was led apart and fastened to a stake. From thence he called to the others, exhorting them to suffer patiently and God would reward them. They tortured him, but he still stood erect, tall and masterful, and addressed his people. For this the angry Iroquois cut away his lower lip and thrust a red-hot iron down his throat. Round the naked body of Father Lalement they tied strips of bark steeped in pitch and set him in a blaze. As if this were not enough agony, on the heads of both they poured boiling water and cut strips of flesh from Brébeuf's limbs. "You told us," cried the fiends, laughing, "that {73} the more one suffers on earth the happier he is in heaven. We wish to make you happy. We torment you in this way because we love you; and you ought to thank us for it!" Still from Brébeuf came no sign of flinching. Baffled in devising further tortures, they cut off his head and tore his body in pieces. The heart of this great man, the founder of the ill-fated Huron mission, was seized by an Iroquois chief and devoured. His friend Lalement, after being tortured all night, was killed by a blow from a hatchet. Two or three days afterwards, when the fleeing Iroquois were leagues away, the Jesuits at St. Mary came to the smoking ruins of St. Ignace. The scorched and mangled remains of the two martyrs met their horrified gaze. These they carried back to St. Mary and buried, all but Brébeuf's skull, which they preserved as a holy relic. At the Hotel Dieu at Quebec it is shown to the visitor, enclosed in a silver bust of the martyr, which his family sent to the good nuns from France. Upon the Hurons such a disaster as this told with crushing force. Flight from their country was all they could think of now. Two weeks later they abandoned for ever fifteen towns to roam northward and eastward in the barren, inhospitable wilderness. In various places the fugitives found refuge, some with this tribe, some with that, but as a strong, separate nation they soon ceased to be, and the fort and mission of St. Mary on the Wye was left solitary in the middle of a great waste.