Realizing that all his fellow
countrymen were practically destroyed, Henry endeavoured to hide
himself. He entered the house of his next-door neighbour, a Frenchman,
and found the whole family at the windows gazing at the scene of blood
before them. He implored this Frenchman to put him into some place of
safety until the massacre was over. The latter merely shrugged his
shoulders and intimated that he could do nothing for him; but a Pani
Indian woman, a slave of this Frenchman, beckoned to Henry to follow
her, and hid him in a garret. Then the Indians burst into the house
and asked the Frenchman if he had got any Englishmen concealed, the
latter returned an evasive answer, telling them to search for
themselves. Henry hid himself under a heap of birch-bark vessels,
which were used in maple-sugar manufacture. The door was unlocked, the
four Indians dashed in, their bodies covered with blood, and armed
with tomahawks. The hidden man thought that the throbbing of his heart
must make a noise loud enough to betray him. The Indians searched the
garret, and one of them approached Henry so closely as almost to touch
him; yet he remained undiscovered, possibly owing to the dark colour
of his clothes and the dim light in the room. Then the Indians, after
describing to the Frenchman how many they had killed and scalped,
returned downstairs, and the door was locked behind them.
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