There they rallied for a while, but the English did not long pursue. They returned to burn the village, after which they retreated, and the Indians entered to mourn over the smoking ruins and to shed tears over the body of their Patriarch, and over those of their own chiefs, Mogg Megone, Bomaseen, Carabasset and others. The Norridgewock tribe was blotted out, and never again did it appear among the antagonists of the white men.

It is interesting to read in connection with this story the poem of Mr. Whittier, entitled Mogg Megone. In it we have a picture of the village as it appeared to some wandering Indians after the devastation of the war.

No wigwam smoke is curling there;
The very earth is scorched and bare;
And they pause and listen to catch a sound

Of breathing life, but there comes not one,
Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound;
And here and there on the blackened ground,
White bones are glistening in the sun.
And where the house of prayer arose,
And the holy hymn at daylight's close,

And the aged priest stood up to bless

The children of the wilderness,

There is nought save ashes sodden and dank,
And the birchen boats of the Norridgewock,

Tethered to tree and stump and rock,
Rotting along the river bank.

Thus we have traced the story of the life and death of the Patriarch of Norridgewock, a man who was devoted to the cause that he had espoused and who died at the post of danger. His acts and his motives have been differently judged; but there is no doubt that he was a strong partisan, that he had espoused the cause of the Indians and of the people of his own nation against the English, and that he entered into the struggle in which he was killed, well knowing that his life was at stake. Still, there is a pathetic interest in the story.

The spot on which Rale is supposed to have fallen was at first marked by a cross, but in 1833, a stone monument was raised to his memory, in the midst of a great concourse of people, with much ceremony, on the anniversary of the sad fight.

CHAPTER XI.

CITIZEN SOLDIERS TAKE A FORTRESS.

HREE men were in earnest conference in one

THR

of the fine old New England mansions, in the early spring of the year 1745. On the banks of the Piscataqua, just opposite Portsmouth, N. H.,lies the town of Kittery in Maine. The region was at that time not known as Maine, but as the County of York, in Massachusetts, for it was not until 1820 that the State of Maine was created out of the vast territory to the northeast, that had long been under Massachusetts government. Let us look at these three men, and see if we can catch some of their conversation. First, I notice the Reverend George Whitefield, a young man of twenty-seven years, full of zeal and fire, who had just come to America for the third time, and was gaining adherents by his earnest preaching. The second was ten years older.

He was the Reverend Nicholas Gilman, pastor of the church in the neighboring town of Durham, in New Hampshire, where he was known as a devoted friend of the new-comer from England, and his own earnest and enthusiastic labors were so exhausting his strength that one might have seen signs that they were preparing him for the last struggle which was to close his devoted life in a few years. These two were the educated men of the group, for Mr. Gilman had graduated at Harvard College, in the class of 1724, with the celebrated Mather Byles, and Whitefield had studied at Oxford.

The third was the wealthy proprietor of the mansion, a man of fine presence, and great wisdom, who had reached the age of forty-eight. His portrait lies before me, and as I turn to it, I see a pleasant countenance from which piercing eyes look out. A well curled wig crowns the head and the elegance of dress betokens the comfortable share of the good things of this world with which he was endowed. It was the person who is now spoken of as Sir Willian Pepperell, though he was then known merely as a man of wealth, prominent in public affairs, who

had for fourteen years held the elevated office of Chief Justice of the Colony. It would lead one to suppose either that persons qualified for this high office were few at the time, or that Pepperell was appointed through partiality, for we read that he only began to study law at the time he received his appointment.

There sit the three men: the rich man of the world, who was a good church member; the "revivalist" lately arrived from England; and the New Hampshire pastor, who had a good salary paid by an attached people, in money, pork, beef, candles, molasses, malt, sugar, cider, rum, pasturing and wood, not to mention other articles that doubtless made his position very comfortable in the good old times.

The conversation is earnest, and we can gather enough to learn that it relates to some important enterprise in which Mr. Pepperell is invited to engage. We can hear Whitefield say that the scheme does not appear to him very promising; that the eyes of all would be upon its leader, and that if he should fail, he would receive the reproaches of the widows