The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

PEV'ERIL OF TlE PEAK. 421
land has shalen from her lap, as a drunkard flings from him his treasures,
so much that is precious in the eyes of God and of his children. There
thousands of our best and most godly men —such whose righteousness
might come between the Almighty and his wrath, and prevent the ruin of
cities -are content to be the inhabitants of the desert, rather encountering
the unenlightened savages, than stooping to extinguish, under the oppression practised in Britain, the light that is within their own minds. There
I remained for a time, during the wars which the colony maintained with
Philip, a great Indian Chief, or Sachem, as they were called, who seemed a
messenger sent from Satan to buffet them. His cruelty was great-his dissimulation profound; and the skill and promptitude with which he maintained a destructive and desultory warfare, inflicted many dreadful calamities on the settlement. I was, by chance, at a small village in the woods,
more than thirty miles from Boston, and in its situation exceedingly lonely,
and surrounded with thickets. Nevertheless, there was no idea of any
danger from the Indians at that time, for men trusted to the protection of a
considerable body of troops who had taken the field for protection of the
frontiers, and who lay, or were supposed to lie, betwixt the hamlet and the
enemy's country. But they had to do with a foe, whom the devil himself
had inspired at once with cunning and cruelty. It was on a Sabbath morning, when we had assembled to take sweet counsel together in the Lord's
house. Our temple was but constructed of wooden logs; but when shall
the chant of trained hirelings, or the sounding of tin and brass tubes amicl
the aisles of a minster, arise so sweetly to Heaven, as did the psalm in
which we united at once our voices and our hearts! An excellent worthy,
who now sleeps in the Lord, Nehemiah Solsgrace, long the companion of
my pilgrimage, had just begun to wrestle in prayer, when a woman, with
disordered looks and dishevelledl hair, entered our chapel in a distracted
manner, screaming incessantly,'The Indians! The Indians V!-In that land
no man dares separate himself friom his means of defence; and whether il
the city or in the field, in the ploughed land or the forest, men keep beside
them their weapons, as did the Jews at the rebuilding of the Temple. So
we sallied forth With our guns and pikes, and heard the whoop of these incarnate devils, already in possession of a part of the town, and exercising
their cruelty on the few whom weighty causes or indisposition had withheld
from public worship; and it was remarked as a judgment, that, upon that
bloody Sabbath, Adrian Hanson, a Dutchhman, a man well enough disposed
towards man, but whose mind was altogether given to worldly gain, was
shot and scalped as he was sunmming his weekly gains in his warehouse.
In fine, there was much damage done; and although our arrival and entrance into combat did in some sort put them back, yet being surprised and
confused, and having no appointed leader of our band, the devilish enemy
shot hard at us, and had some advantage. It was- pitiful to hear the
screams of women and children amid the report of guns and the whistling
of bullets, mixed with the ferocious yells of these savages, which they term
their war-whoop. Several houses in the upper part of the village were soon
on fire; and the roaring of the flames, and crackling of the great beams as
they blazed, added to the horrible confusion; while the smoke which the
wind drove against us gave farther advantage to the enemy, who fought, as
it were, invisible, and under cover, whilst we fell fast by their unerring fire.
In this state of confusion, and while we were about to adopt the desperate
project of evacuating the village, and, placing the women and children in
the centre, of attempting a retreat to the nearest settlement, it pleased
Heaven to send us unexpected assistance. A tall man, of a reverend appearance, whom no one of us had ever seen before, suddenly was in the
midst of us, as we hastily agitated the resolution of retreating. His garments were of the skin of the elk, and he wore sword and carried gun; I
never saw any thing more august than his features, overshadowed by locks
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