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baptize the sick; he next pronounced a general ab-
solution on all who sought it, and then prepared to
resign his life as a sacrifice to his vows.
The wigwars are set on fire; the Mohawks approach the chapel, and the consecrated envoy serenely advances to meet them.
Astonishment seized the barbarians.
At length, drawing near, they discharge at him a flight of arrows.
All gashed and rent by wounds, he still continued to speak with surprising energy,—now inspiring fear of the divine anger, and again, in gentle tones, yet of more piercing power than the whoops of the savages, breathing the affectionate messages of mercy and grace.
Such were his actions till he received a death-blow from a halbert.
The victim to the heroism of charity died, the name of Jesus on his lips: the wilderness gave him a grave; the
Huron nation were his mourners.
By his religious associates it was believed that he appeared twice after his death, youthfully radiant in the sweetest form of celestial glory; that, as the reward for his torments, a crowd of souls, redeemed from purgatory, were his honoring escort into heaven.
Not a year elapsed, when, in the dead of a Cana-
dian winter, a party of a thousand
Iroquois fell, before dawn, upon the little village of
St. Ignatius.
It was sufficiently fortified, but only four hundred persons were present, and there were no sentinels.
The palisades were set on fire, and an indiscriminate massacre of the sleeping inhabitants followed.
The village of
St. Louis was alarmed, and its women and children fly to the woods, while eighty warriors prepare a defence.
A breach is made in the palisades; the enemy enter; and the group of Indian cabins becomes a slaughter-house.
In this village
