[74] I remember to have seen Eleazer Williams at my father's house in Boston, when a boy. My impression of him is that of a good-looking and somewhat portly man, showing little trace of Indian blood, and whose features, I was told, resembled those of the Bourbons. Probably this likeness, real or imagined, suggested the imposition he was practising at the time. The story of the "Bell of St. Regis" is probably another of his inventions. It is to the effect that the bell of the church at Deerfield was carried by the Indians to the mission of St. Regis, and that it is there still. But there is reason to believe that there was no church bell at Deerfield, and it is certain that St. Regis did not exist till more than a half-century after Deerfield was attacked. It has been said that the story is true, except that the name of Caughnawaga should be substituted for that of St. Regis; but the evidence for this conjecture is weak. On the legend of the bell, see Le Moine, _Maple Leaves, New Series_ (1873), 29; _Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc._, 1869, 1870, 311; _Hist. Mag. 2d Series_, ix. 401. Hough, _Hist. St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties_, 116, gives the story without criticism. [75] The earlier editions of this book follow, in regard to Samuel Gill, the statements of Maurault, which are erroneous, as has been proved by the careful and untiring research of Miss C. Alice Baker, to whose kindness I owe the means of correcting them. Papers in the archives of Massachusetts leave no doubt as to the time and place of Samuel Gill's capture. [76] Maurault, _Hist. des Abenakis_, 377. I am indebted to R. A. Ramsay, Esq., of Montreal, for a paper on the Gill family, by Mr. Charles Gill, who confirms the statements of Maurault so far as relates to the genealogies. John and Zechariah Tarbell, captured when boys at Groton, became Caughnawaga chiefs; and one of them, about 1760, founded the mission of St. Regis. Green, _Groton during the Indian Wars_, 116, 117-120. CHAPTER V. 1704-1713. THE TORMENTED FRONTIER. Border Raids.--Haverhill.--Attack and Defence.--War to the Knife.--Motives of the French.--Proposed Neutrality.--Joseph Dudley.--Town and Country.