32 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



liad been nine years prisoner of war. This time the cannon roared in 

 greeting, and every bell in Quebec was rung as the bishop landed amid 

 the acclamations of the people, who all went down. to the water side to 

 bid him welcome home. The convent annals of the 18th of August, 

 1713, record his first visit to the Ursulincs since his captivity. " In the 

 course of the afternoon we had the pleasure of seeing our good bishop 

 and hearing him express his joy. For our part, great is our gratitude 

 to the God of all goodness, who has vouchsafed to grant us such conso- 

 lation after our long and heavy trials." 



In 1708, a very different prisoner of war had appeared at the con- 

 vent. This M^as Esther \\nieelwrdglit, the hvelvc-y ear-old great-grand- 

 daughter of John ^Vlieelwright, one of the most honoured of Xew Eng- 

 land Puritan ministers. The child had been carried off in the raid 

 against the little village of Wells, five years before. The Abenaki chief 

 who took her had adopted her; and she had almost forgotten her English 

 when Father Bigot came into the camp on a missionary tour. It was no 

 easy matter to rescue her. An Indian chief thought pale-face prisoners 

 were trophies of war, quite as much as objects of ransom. And it was 

 only after long diplomacy and many seductive presents that Esther was 

 given up to the Great Captain of the French, the Marquis de Yaudreuil, 

 who sent her to school at the Ursnlines' with his own daughter. Was it 

 the contrast between itjhe savage restlessness of the forest, as well as the 

 civilized restlessness of French sojdety at the Château St. Louis, on the 

 one hand, and, on the other, the calm of the convent, that revived her 

 childish memories of home and school and the happy orchard beside 

 which she was torn away that midsummer morning, more than half her 

 life ago? Who knows? But when the peace that restored the bishop 

 to his diocese had let her family write for her return to* them, she had 

 learnt a second, separating language, and found a new home and a new 

 faith, and had taken the white veil among the Ursulines as Sister Esther 

 of the Infant Jesus. She petitioned the Governor, as her adopted father, 

 to allow her to make her final vows. The bishop approved ; and Father 

 Bigot preached the sermon at her admission. Letters were exchanged 

 with the family, and the portrait then painted for them in her nun's 

 dressi is now in the possession of the seventh generation from the one 

 to whose members it was sent. 



But Esther was ,not tlie only, nor even the first of the Puritan 

 Ursulines. Marv Davis, carried off froui Salem in 1686, entered the 

 novitiate in 1698. And, twenty-four yeai-s later than this, j\rary Dorothea 

 Jordan also found her happiest earthly home in the " House of Jesus." 

 which the French missionaries had so often described to the three little 



