As for me, be sure I slept not: slumber crept not on my senses; Less intense is lover's musing than a captive's bent on ways To escape from fearful thralling, and a death by fire appalling; So, unsleeping, I was keeping on the Northern Star my gaze. There I lay--no muscle stirring, mind unerring, thought unswerving, Body nerving, till a death-like, breathless slumber fell around; Then my right hand cautious stealing, o'er my bed-mate's person feeling, Till each finger stooped to linger on the belt his waist that bound. 'Twas his knife--the handle clasping, firmly grasping, forth I drew it, Clinging to it firm, but softly, with a more than robber's art; As I drove it to its utter length of blade, I heard the flutter Of a snow-bird--ah! 'twas _no_ bird! 'twas the flutter of my heart. Then I cut the cord that bound me, peered around me, rose uprightly, Stepped as lightly as a lover on his blessed bridal day; Swiftly as my need inclined me, kept the bright North Star behind me, And, ere dawning of the morning, I was twenty miles away. THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH. Under French officers and priests, the war continued to be conducted with a cruelty as aimless as it was brutal. Isolated hamlets were burned, and their inhabitants tortured or taken prisoners, only, for the most part, to be butchered on the way to Canada. On August 29, 1708, a party of French and Indians, under De Chaillons and the infamous De Rouville, surprised the town of Haverhill. Rushing upon it, as their custom was, just before daylight, they fired several houses, plundered others, and killed some thirty or forty of the inhabitants. The townspeople rallied, and after an hour's fighting drove away the assailants, killing nearly thirty, among them De Rouville himself. PENTUCKET [August 29, 1708] How sweetly on the wood-girt town The mellow light of sunset shone! Each small, bright lake, whose waters still Mirror the forest and the hill, Reflected from its waveless breast The beauty of a cloudless west, Glorious as if a glimpse were given Within the western gates of heaven, Left, by the spirit of the star Of sunset's holy hour, ajar! Beside the river's tranquil flood The dark and low-walled dwellings stood, Where many a rood of open land Stretched up and down on either hand, With corn-leaves waving freshly green The thick and blackened stumps between Behind, unbroken, deep and dread, The wild, untravelled forest spread, Back to those mountains, white and cold, Of which the Indian trapper told, Upon whose summits never yet Was mortal foot in safety set.