A traveller passing through this part
of Canada would have found the houses empty. Here and there he would
have seen all the inhabitants of a parish laboring in a field
together, watched by sentinels, and generally guarded by a squad of
regulars. When one field was tilled, they passed to the next; and this
communal process was repeated when the harvest was ripe. At night,
they took refuge in the fort; that is to say, in a cluster of log
cabins, surrounded by a palisade. Sometimes, when long exemption from
attack had emboldened them, they ventured back to their farm-houses,
an experiment always critical and sometimes fatal. Thus the people of
La Chesnaye, forgetting a sharp lesson they had received a year or two
before, returned to their homes in fancied security. One evening a
bachelor of the parish made a visit to a neighboring widow, bringing
with him his gun and a small dog. As he was taking his leave, his
hostess, whose husband had been killed the year before, told him that
she was afraid to be left alone, and begged him to remain with her, an
invitation which he accepted. Towards morning, the barking of his dog
roused him; when, going out, he saw the night lighted up by the blaze
of burning houses, and heard the usual firing and screeching of an
Iroquois attack.
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