THREE DAYS before our arrival at Fort Edward, there had occurred a sad murder by a party of Wyandot Indians, led by a powerful chief named The Panther, of a Miss Jane M’Crea who lived with a relative of General Fraser’s in the neighbourhood of Lake George. The occasion was the abandonment of Fort George, at the southern end of the lake, by the American garrison; and the flight, either to the American or the British camp, of almost all the settlers of the district, for fear of marauding parties. Since the news of Miss M’Crea’s fate made a great noise in Great Britain and America at this time, I shall take the liberty of relating it in the words of that great American partisan, Dr Ramsay:
This, though true, was no premeditated barbarity. The circumstances were as follows: Mr Jones, Miss M’Crea’s lover, from an anxiety for her safety, engaged some Indians to remove her from among the Americans, and promised to reward the person who should bring her safe to him, with a barrel of rum. Two of the Indians who had conveyed her some distance on the way to her intended husband, disputed which of them should present her to Mr Jones. Both were anxious for the reward. One of them killed her with his tomahawk, to prevent the other from receiving it. General Burgoyne obliged the Indians to deliver up the murderer, and threatened to put him to death. His life was only spared, upon the Indians agreeing to terms, which the General thought would be more efficacious than an execution, to prevent similar mischiefs.
The above account has been challenged by some, who deny that Mr Jones, an officer in a newly raised corps of Loyalist sharpshooters attached to our army, ever made any bargain with the Indians; and say that Miss M’Crea was found wandering in the woods. Others explain that the dispute arose between The Panther and a chief of the Ottawas who met the party as it was escorting Miss M’Crea to our camp in all civility and decency. Be this as it may, The Panther, also named ‘The Wolf’ by some authors, arrived in camp with Miss M’Crea’s scalp in his belt, which had hair of a yard and a quarter long. Some of the many poets who later versified upon her fate described these tresses as being ‘black as raven’s wing’; others made them ‘yellow as ripe Indian corn.’ I cannot satisfy my female readers upon this question. The Panther was, it seems, unaware of the heinousness of his act, which was that expected of an Indian man of honour: it was held decent to avoid unnecessary bloodshed between fellow-warriors by sacrificing the subject of dispute, whether horse, dog, or woman, so that neither party should triumph. He consented at last, when he was acquainted with the sorrow and grief of Mr Jones, to sell him the scalp for a trifling consideration, though Indians in general are most chary of parting with these relics even at a very high price. (Mr Jones, by the way, never subsequently married but, surviving the war, retired to Canada, a morose and taciturn man.)
Had the threatened execution of The Panther taken place, his brothers-in-arms would have been bound by custom to revenge themselves upon our sentinels and advanced posts, for he was held in great esteem by them. General Burgoyne did very well not to press the matter, against the remonstrances of General Fraser. The chiefs of the confederacy of Wyandots, Algonquins, and Ottawas, then called a council under the presidency of a Frenchman, Monsieur St Luc le Corne, who had once led them in their wars against the English. At this meeting they informed General Burgoyne that their warriors were most discontented by the restraint in which they were kept, as never before when they had served as allies of the French. M. St Luc remarked: ‘General, we must brutalize affairs, you know.’ General Burgoyne replied warmly: ‘I would rather lose every Indian in my army, Monsieur St Luc, than connive at such enormities as you would condone.’ The next day, therefore, these tribes deserted by the hundred, loaded with such plunder as they had collected; only Indians of the Six Nations being left with us, and not many of these.
It cannot be a matter of much surprise that the murder of Miss M’Crea and General Burgoyne’s pardon of The Panther were painted in the darkest and most disagreeable colours by the Americans, and that reports of similar outrages were fabricated by them and printed at large in their newspapers to discredit us. Dr Benjamin Franklin, who should have known better, circulated a document of his own composition, purporting to be an extract from a letter written by a certain Captain Gerrish of the New England Militia. This piece, which appeared in the Boston Independent Chronicle, described in minute circumstance the taking of booty from the Seneca nation, among which were eight packages of scalps lifted from American soldiers, farmers, women, boys, girls, and infants. A forged invoice and explanation from one James Cranford, trader, to Sir Guy Carleton in Canada was appended, and his supposed request ‘that this peltry be sent to the King of England’.
But it astonished me later to learn that such cheap lies obtained circulation and credit even at home. Saunders’ News-Letter of August 14th 1777 gravely asserted: ‘Seven hundred men, women, and children were scalped on the sides of Lake Champlain. The Light Infantry and Indians scoured each bank, women, children, etc., flying in turn before them.’ Now the fact is, that between St John’s and Crown Point there were not more than ten human dwellings, the whole country being upwards of eighty miles of woods and wilderness. Could inhabitants who never existed be either scalped or made to fly before their enemies? Yet, necessary as it would seem for such public scandal-mongers to acquaint themselves with the topography of the places in which they fix their scenes of horrid action, their readers are usually as ignorant and willing to believe evil as themselves were to concoct it, so that the lie travels far. As a former light infantry man I hold this libel against my Corps in particular detestation.
At Fort Edward our expedition was faced with a further stubborn task, namely to clear our communications with Fort George, twenty miles from us, which was to be our base of supplies. General Schuyler, who was not superseded until a fortnight later, had sent a thousand axe-men up each of the roads and tracks connecting these places. Moreover, the road, once cleared, must be solidly laid to bear heavy transport. For between us and Albany, our destination, lay two broad and swift rivers over which our artillery must somehow be conveyed: thus, in addition to the artillery itself and our supply wagons we must also bring along large numbers of batteaux and a quantity of planking to form two solid pontoon bridges. One-third of the team-horses expected from Canada had not arrived to haul for us, nor could our foragers, scour the neighbourhood as they might, discover more than a mere fifty ox-teams. Thus a deal of the hauling was by man-power.
Great ill feeling was caused among us that the Brunswick foraging-parties failed to add to the common stock the cattle and sheep they took, yet drew from this stock their share of what we put in. We seldom now tasted fresh meat, but were reduced to our British salt beef, salt pork, and biscuit once more; and while our officers were content each to take all his worldly goods upon his shoulders in a knapsack, the German officers positively refused to be separated from their superfluities, but maintained a great train of vehicles to carry them. Our officers felt that this was unjust, and regretted having left at Ticonderoga, in the Light Infantry storehouse, many comforts which had become necessaries in a climate of this sort, and which could be conveyed upon a single tumbril. Colonel Lord Balcarres wrote asking General Burgoyne’s permission to send a small party back to ‘fetch a little baggage’. This permission was refused, on the ground that no party of men, however small, could be spared; and it was desired that no officer, either, should be given leave of absence for this purpose.
Lord Balcarres thereupon went in person to General Burgoyne and said frankly that he stood greatly in need of certain articles, such as shirts and stockings, left at Ticonderoga, and must fetch them at all events. Though he had been forbidden to send out any party of men, however small, nor any officer, he warned the General that he would obey this order only in the letter – he would send out a single sergeant, as being neither an officer nor a party of men. General Burgoyne took this in good part, but enlarged upon the danger to such a lonely emissary, for the woods were filled with prowling rebels. Lord Balcarres thereupon declared that he had a man in mind for the task who could be counted upon successfully to accomplish it; and was then good enough to name Corporal, acting as Sergeant, Roger Lamb of The Ninth.
General Burgoyne recollected me as both the messenger sent on from Hibbertown and the surgeon with whom he had spoken at Fort Anna. He not only consented but ordered that, if I accepted the mission, I should hasten the delivery to him of a quantity of other stores newly arrived at Ticonderoga, taking command of the recruits and convalescents there and bringing them back with me as escort. The cause of General Burgoyne’s anxiety for the stores was that his advance was held up for lack of them. His foolish counsellor, Major Skene, had advised him to supply himself at the expense of the enemy, who had a richly stocked magazine and supply-base at Bennington, thirty miles to the south-eastward. Major Skene declared that the supplies at Bennington were but weakly guarded, that the district was populated with none by Loyalists, and that the Brunswick Dragoons, who still lacked horses, might have their choice of several hundred that were collected there. General Burgoyne thereupon sent off a force of Germans, with an advance guard of Indians, who, coming up against a strong force of New Hampshire militia and farmers from Vermont – under General Stark, a former British officer who had been overslaughed for promotion and now took handsome revenge – were utterly routed, losing five hundred men and all their artillery, ammunition and wagons. Thus his need of fresh supplies was worse than before.
Lord Balcarres now sent for me and explained what he wished done, without disguising the dangers of the journey. ‘But,’ said he graciously, ‘my opinion of you is already so high that I feel perfectly sure that you will successfully undertake for us this very necessary service. See, here is General Burgoyne’s pass, made out in your name.’
I undertook the commission with alacrity, not a little proud to be chosen as the depository of his Lordship’s confidence and that of our Commander-in-Chief.
We were stationed at Fort Miller at this time, which lay fifteen miles beyond Fort Edward. The month was early September, although I cannot now recall the day, since my journal remained unposted for two months from July 8th, the day of the fight at Fort Anna. I set out from Fort Miller at noon, taking with me no blanket, but only some provisions, a rifle and twenty rounds of ball-cartridge. That it was a hazardous journey I knew well, for several of our men had been attacked when bringing up supplies or running messages. However, I kept off the beaten track, like an Indian, and by four o’clock came safe to Fort Edward – where a sergeant of the regiment stationed there gave me a drink of rum – then off again towards Lake George, after ten minutes’ halt.
In this lonely journey through almost continuous pine forest, broken with tangled clearings, I met with no single soul, and stopped but once or twice by the way to refresh myself with the wild raspberries of excellent flavour that there abounded. I recalled, with little satisfaction, that this was the very way that had been taken by the wretched survivors of the Massacre of Lake George two years before my birth. The victims of this massacre were some scores of British soldiers – the number is not exactly known – together with their women and children. They were the garrison of Fort William Henry at the lake head, who had capitulated from hunger to the French general, Monsieur de Montcalm. He had allowed them all the honours of war and a safe convoy under guard to Fort Edward, but his callous and inhuman subordinates permitted these unfortunate people, whose ammunition had been taken from them, to be plundered and murdered by the Indians in the French service, led by M. St Luc le Corne.
One of the survivors, Captain Carver, wrote very pathetically of his escape. Being first robbed of his coat, waistcoat, hat, buckles, and the money from his breeches pocket, he ran to the nearest French sentinel and claimed his protection, who only called him an English dog and thrust him back with violence among the Indians. He was next struck at with clubs and spears, most of which he dexterously dodged, though a spear grazed his side, and some other weapon caught his ankle. When he took refuge among a party of his countrymen, the collar and waistband were all that remained of his shirt. The war-whoop then sounded and a general murder began, with the scalping of these defenceless men, women and children; yet French officers were observed walking about unconcernedly at some distance, shrugging and smiling. The circle of the British becoming greatly thinned, Captain Carver burst out from it, but was caught at by two stout chiefs, who hurried him to a retired spot where they could dispatch him at their leisure. He had almost resigned himself to his fate, when an English gentleman of some distinction, as Captain Carver could discover by the fine scarlet velvet breeches he wore, his only remaining covering, happened to rush by; and one of the Indians relinquished his hold, intent on this new prize. The velvet breeches showed fight, and Captain Carver broke away in the bustle; glancing around, he saw the unfortunate gentleman dispatched with a tomahawk – which added both to his speed and desperation. To be brief, after many similar hazards, the Captain escaped to the briary forest and, after three days in the cold dews and burning sun without sustenance, and with the loss of a shoe, reached Fort Edward at last more dead than alive.
Heaven evidently avenged the massacre by striking down Monsieur de Montcalm at Quebec and finally driving the French from Canada. As for the Indians, they perished of smallpox, which they took from the French, almost to a man; for while their blood was in a state of fermentation and Nature was striving to throw out the peccant matter, they checked her operations by plunging into cold water, which proved fatal to them. The reason that the French were held in such esteem by the Indians was that they interfered little with tribal customs, not even acknowledging the unwritten law of Christendom that all innocent and defenceless persons of whatever nationality, and especially women and children, must never in any circumstances be deliberately resigned to the barbarity of savages. They even winked at the practice of cannibalism, for about this same time Monsieur de Carbière’s Ottawan Indians drank British blood from skull-goblets, and ate British flesh broiled, as Father Roubaud, a Jesuit priest, has testified in his history.
In avoiding the road, I made a circuit through the woods which brought me past a broad sixty-foot waterfall to the very pond near which the massacre took place. It was now called Bloody Pond. Dark had fallen and the dews were chill. The shallow waters of the pond were covered with beautiful white lilies. I was greatly fatigued by this time, and withdrawing from the pond to a deep part of the wood, lay down to sleep under a tree. The night dews awakened me shivering with cold about two hours later, and I resumed my march. I was no Indian, and had from drowsiness lost my sense of direction. By three o’clock in the morning I had no notion where I might be. Happening to see a light on my left, I cautiously approached it and perceived that it came from the open door of a log-house, against which was outlined the figure of a man wearing a large round flopped hat.
As I stood there, wondering what he might be, whether rebel or loyal, I heard a sudden shivering cry and a few unintelligible words, as if some woman or child were being put to the torture. Confused thoughts of Bloody Pond still crowding my head, I strode forward with my piece primed and cocked, resolving to take instant vengeance on the villains, come what might.
I called to the man: ‘Hold up your hands, I have you covered’ – with which summons he complied. Coming close, I found him to be a man of sturdy frame with unpowdered dark hair cut short and hanging around a white hat; his face was of a wild, melancholy cast. He smiled at me and asked in a smooth, wheedling, yet not unpleasant voice: ‘What dost thou here with that weapon of murder, Friend?’
I pushed him aside and burst into the room – and there saw at once that I had absurdly mistaken the cry: the agony was not that of death, but of birth. A woman lay on a wooden bed in the corner of a plain, neat room, her face covered with her hands, her knees drawn up; and another woman, wearing a little black bonnet, was ministering to her in the capacity of midwife. I checked my impetuous career, and turned back in shame to the man in the doorway. ‘Forgive my foolishness, sir,’ I said. ‘I was confused. I had thought it was the Indians at work.’
‘Have no fear of the Indians. They are an honest and well-conducted folk, unless they are abused, or partake of ardent spirits and so become tired.’ (‘Tired’ I found to be his term for ‘intoxicated’.) ‘They have shown me and my family much kindness, for the sake of William Penn, who was their friend.’
I then observed that he was a member of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and not a wet Quaker, neither – the sort who affect silver buckles on their shoes, lace ruffles at neck and wrist, and powder on their hair – but of the dry sort who wear drab, threadbare cloth coat and breeches, cotton stockings, and plain, square-toed shoes.
‘I was going out to the patch to commune with the Lord, praying Him to mitigate the suffering of this poor soldier’s wife,’ he said simply. ‘Wilt thou accompany me, friend, and join thy prayers to mine? For it is written that “When two or three are gathered together in Thy name” – here he lifted his eyes reverently to Heaven – “Thou wilt grant their request.” My inner voice assures me that thy steps were directed to my door for this very purpose.’
I answered nothing, but went with him; and presently we kneeled down together in the dews at the edge of a held of tall hemp which he had planted. There he began to pray with exceeding slowness, trembling in all his body as he wrestled with the words. They came out one by one, often in repetition, as if wrung from a strict compression of his heart: ‘Grant – O Lord – to this – my – poor – poor – sister – my – sister – now – O Lord – labouring – labouring – labouring – with child – cheerful – courage – now – oh – humble – courage – to endure – endure – O – Lord – to endure – the punishment – of her mother – her mother – who sinned – her mother – our mother – Eve – who – sinned – in Eden.’
‘Amen,’ said I greatly affected; and as we rose from our knees, the woman’s pangs lessened, for we heard the other comforting her and calling her ‘poor soul’ and ‘dear honey’. But the child was not yet born.
‘Who is the woman?’ I asked, in a low tone outside the door.
‘Friend, I do not know her name. She was brought to my house by a Mohican Indian, a follower of the Christian Thayendanegea, or Captain Brant, a chief of that nation. She affirms herself to be the wife of a soldier in the Ninth Regiment and relates that she was braving the perils of these woods alone and on foot, from Montreal, in order to come up with him. She was seized, she says, with the sickness of labour in the forest, where she must have perished had the Indian not found her and brought her to me. Yet I wonder that she is dressed in Mohican fashion, not in English dress.’
The Quaker woman then emerging, I asked her trembling: ‘Will she live? Does all go well?’
She replied shortly, ‘With God’s help. There is nothing amiss.’
The pangs began again at that moment, and the woman returned to the house. I was so torn with emotion that I caught at the Quaker’s sleeve and, cried I, ‘Come back, sir, to the hemp patch, and let us wrestle this out together.’
He was nothing loath, and turned back with me.
I do not know what I prayed in my agony of heart, but the honest man knelt by me and cried, ‘Amen, Amen!’ to my wild outpourings, until the cries from the cabin ceased; and presently the woman in the bonnet came out with a little creature wrapped in a cloth and, says she, ‘Josiah, O Josiah, kiss ’un, the sweet little girl.’
Josiah took and kissed the child fervently, and so did I, with indescribable emotions. ‘The mother is sleeping now,’ the woman said.
I told the good Quaker, who begged me to enter his house and partake of a dish of tea: ‘No, I thank you, Friend Josiah – for a true friend you have been to me – I cannot accept. I must go forward to Fort George, according to my orders. Direct me, I beg, for I am lost.’
He said piously, ‘No man is lost who loves God and his neighbour.’ Now that dawn was at hand, he showed me the path plainly, and I thanked him.
I said, ‘Friend Josiah, tell the woman, whoever she may be, that Sergeant Roger Lamb of The Ninth will be passing this way again in about four days’ time, with a party of men, and will be happy to convey her to the army in one of the wagons. And tell her this, that I wish her and the child well, from the bottom of my heart.’
I made him repeat these words exactly after me, shook hands with him in affectionate farewell, and directed my steps towards Fort George.
I reached this place as the sun rose; and upon my presenting to the officer in charge of the garrison my letter from General Burgoyne, he provided me with a captured American batteau to take me up Lake George to Ticonderoga. The Canadians called this lake by the elder name of Lake Sacrament, from the purity of its water, which they were in former times at the pains to procure for sacramental use in their churches. The bed was of fine white sand, giving a pellucid clearness to the lake, which was four-and-thirty miles long and nowhere more than four miles wide. Lake George embosomed above two hundred islands, which were for the most part but barren heath-covered rocks garnished with a few cedar and spruce trees. There was abundance of fish here, such as the black bass and a beautiful large speckled trout, remarkable for the carnation of its flesh. I drowsed rather than slept in my passage through this romantic waterway, which was performed in the finest weather.
We went ashore at Diamond Island with a message for the Captain in charge of the stores-depot there. The island was so called from the transparent crystals that abounded in the rocks upon it. A soldier of The Forty-Seventh presented me with one which he had found lying loose in the sand, consisting of a six-sided prism, terminated at both ends by six-sided pyramids. When placed on a window-sill in the sun it threw little rainbows on the walls and ceilings, he said. Diamond Island was once overrun with rattlesnakes, whose sloughed skins lay about on all sides, and was in consequence avoided by every one. However, one evening a batteau conveying a herd of hogs was caught in a storm while sailing near by and overset. The Canadians and the hogs swam together to the shore, where the former spent the night in the trees and the latter ran off earnestly grunting. The next day the Canadians hailed a passing vessel and were taken off: but some time later, returning to the island, they found the hogs immensely fat, and hardly a single rattlesnake remaining. When they slaughtered one of these hogs they found by what means the island had been rid of its noxious tenantry; for its stomach was full of the undigested remains of rattlesnakes.
Near Halfway Island I witnessed a curious sight, namely a migration of grey squirrels and black: of whom hundreds were attempting to swim across the lake, which was then as smooth as glass, from the western to the eastern shore. We passed a number of their drowned corpses; and others which we overtook, nearly exhausted, ran up into the batteau, upon our putting down an oar before them. The boatman secured a dozen of them and said that he would put little chains around them and tame them for pets. Their bushy tails had acted as a sort of float to support them in the water; but the legend that they will raise their tails to act as mast and sail in a breeze I judge ridiculous.
A great curiosity hereabouts was the double echo, which our boatman showed us by calling out in a shrill voice the name of his wife, Louise Marie, which was repeated in melancholy fashion by the curved sides of a mountain, from two distinct quartets at once. I confess that my heart cried, ‘Kate, Kate’ no less loud and longingly, though my tongue was silent.
For the rest of the journey I slept. A brisk southerly breeze, springing up, carried the boat swiftly forward under sail. Disembarking above the Falls, I made the rest of my journey on foot to Ticonderoga, by way of Mount Hope, passing by a camp of American prisoners of war and several storehouses, and arrived late that same night. I was a day completing my business at the Fort, and two days more in retracing my way down the lake. I now conducted a brigades of batteaux containing a great deal of baggage and stores, and recruits and convalescents to the number of sixty. In addition, a crowd of Canadian French came with me, supplied by General Carleton at General Burgoyne’s request, to work the batteaux on Hudson’s River. I urged upon my command the necessity of speed, and kept every man who could work an oar, busy in urging the craft forward.
While I was at Ticonderoga I noticed the remains of a bonfire that some of our young officers had made, of an enormous stack of paper-money issued by order of the American Congress. Several tightly bound quires of bills, of high denomination, had remained unburned and hardly scorched. It occurred to me that it was as foolish an act to destroy these printed promises to pay in specie, as it would be to tear up a private note of hand. I therefore placed the bulk of them to store and took a commission for myself of five thousand dollars. The bills that I chose for myself were of twenty-dollar denomination, as being less bulky for my haversack, and had upon them a rude cut of a zephyr in a cloud disturbing the ocean waves, and the motto Vi Concitate, or ‘Disturb with force!’ I thought the device appropriate, though to raise the wind by the issue of such paper unbacked by specie was a doubtful procedure, and when the fraud was discovered by the common people was likely to cause great dissension. The four-dollar notes, which I rejected, showed a wild-boar running on a lance, with the printed sentiment, ‘Either death or a decent life’; it was not clear whether the Revolutionary cause was represented by the resolute lance or by the courageous boar.
Returning without adventure to Fort George, I hastened to call upon the Quaker Josiah, during the time that the wagons were being loaded from my brigade of batteaux.
I knocked at the door, my heart beating loudly against my ribs, and waited with the utmost impatience to be admitted. Receiving no reply to my summons, I pushed open the door. There was nobody at home, but a weak cry from an adjoining room sent me hurrying to where the child was lying in a cradle of maple-wood, its tiny body covered with gauze against the mosquitoes, and naked because of the great heat of the day. Around its neck was tied my Charles groat on a slight blue ribbon.
I could not wait, for my military business was urgent; but I had the good fortune to meet with Josiah half a mile from the hut. He informed me that the negress who attended his wife, an emancipated slave, had two days previously lost her infant, of a cough. Kate Harlowe had thereupon resigned the child to the care of this woman, and the guardianship of the good Quaker and his wife, saying that she herself had no milk to give it, nor was the battlefield any place for a mother and her new-born child. But her place as a wife was beside her husband. The very day after I left her there, Josiah said, she had bidden the family farewell and set out to meet her husband, though against their wishes and continued entreaties.
The Quaker turned and walked a little of the way with me back to the Fort. He spoke very honestly of the shortcomings of numbers of his coreligionists. Not only were there Wet Quakers, who loved the world too well, but (it seemed) there were even Free Quakers who bore arms in the war. Yet, he said, such plain murder – if I would forgive the term, being a soldier – was perhaps less heinous in the eyes of God than the hypocritical action of some of his former companions at Philadelphia. In refusing to serve in the wars, or to pay the tax imposed upon them for their refusal, they acted in conformity with their faith; but he detested that they had voted the sum of twenty thousand pounds for ‘wheat, barley, and other grains’, letting it be known that among ‘other grains’ might be counted those of gunpowder – and thus becoming accessories of murder. In disgust of which unrighteous folly he had left them, and come to live in the wilderness.
I asked him: ‘Friend Josiah, if you think me a murderer, why do you walk at my side in so social a fashion, and talk with me so pleasantly?’
He replied: ‘Our Lord, Jesus Christ Himself, did not hold himself apart from the Roman soldiers, nor even from a Centurion, their officer. And John the Baptist bade soldiers be content with their pay.’
‘If Saint John said that indeed, surely he was condoning murder? For the payment was for their being soldiers, namely for the practice of killing.’
He made no reply, but paced on with compressed lips.
I asked him again, thinking that perhaps he had not heard me: ‘Expound, Friend Josiah: why did he who was counted worthy to baptize the Saviour of Mankind thus address soldiers, bidding them be content with their pay?’
He answered, ‘Had even the Saviour Himself told them, “Thou shalt not kill”, they would have mocked at Him (though such was the command of the Father), for they had taken the soldiers’ oath to Caesar and could not unsay it. They were already murderers, as thou sayest. To them could be given no higher notion of virtue than they were capable to follow. And to thee, friend Roger, as my inner voice assures me, the Lord would not say, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” for thou knowest this commandment well, yet hast disobeyed it in a manner that cannot be undone. Instead, He would say, “Keep thy evil imaginings away from this woman, since she is the wife of another, and pray God that thou fallest not again into the same snare.”’
With that he grasped my hand, the tears wetting his cheeks, and left me. His last words were: ‘The child will be taught to worship God in this Wilderness.’
I returned very pensively to Fort George, where I made inquiries after Kate Harlowe, whose path would have led her past the outer sentinels; but she had not passed that way. I concluded that the sound of my name had refreshed her affections, and that she had returned to the company of the Mohican Indians rather than link herself again with her husband Harlowe, and thus bring equal pain upon herself and me.
The next evening I had the gratification of conveying the stores and baggage in safety to the army, and of being thanked by my officers for the manner in which I had executed the orders confided to me.