1697.] DISAPPOINTMENT. 385 



complishecl. It proved a positive advantage to 

 New England, since a host of Indians, who would 

 otherwise have been turned loose upon the borders, 

 were gathered by Saint-Castin at the Penobscot to 

 wait for the fleet, and kept there idle all summer. 



It is needless to dwell farther on the war in 

 Acadia. There were petty combats by land and 

 sea ; Villieu was captured and carried to Boston ; 

 a band of New England rustics made a futile at- 

 tempt to dislodge Villebon from his fort at Nax- 

 ouat ; while, throughout the contest, rivalry and 

 jealousy rankled among the French officials, who 

 continually maligned each other in tell-tale letters 

 to the court. Their hope that the Abenakis would 

 force back the English boundary to the Piscataqua 

 was never fulfilled. At Kittery, at Wells, and 

 even among the ashes of York, the stubborn 

 settlers held their ground, while war-parties prowled 

 along the whole frontier, from the Kennebec to 

 the Connecticut. A single incident will show the 

 nature of the situation, and the qualities which it 

 sometimes called forth. 



Early in the spring that followed the capture of 

 Pemaquid, a band of Indians fell, after daybreak, 

 on a number of farm-houses near the village of 

 Haverhill. One of them belonged to a settler 

 named Dustan, whose wife Hannah had borne a 

 child a week before, and lay in the house, nursed 

 by Mary Neff, one of her neighbors. Dustan had 

 gone to his work in a neighboring field, taking with 

 him his seven children, of whom the youngest was 

 two years old. Hearing the noise of the attack, 



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