In our battle array!

[Illustration]




THE STOLEN CHILDREN.

BY MRS. M.A. LIVERMORE.


Not many years ago, the beautiful hills and valleys of New England gave
to the wild Indian a home, and its bright waters and quiet forests
furnished him with food. Rude wigwams stood where now ascends the hum of
the populous city, and council-fires blazed amid the giant trees which
have since bowed before the axe of the settler. Between that rude age
and the refinement of the present day, many and fearful were the strifes
of the red owner of the land with the invading white man, who, having
crossed the waters of the Atlantic, sought to drive him from his
hitherto undisputed possessions. The recital of deeds of inhuman cruelty
which characterized that period; the rehearsal of bloody massacres of
inoffensive women and innocent children, which those cruel savages
delighted in, would even now curdle the blood with horror, and make one
sick at heart.

It was in this period of fearful warfare that the events occurred which
form the foundation of the following story.

Not far from the year 1680, a small colony was planted on the banks of