News soon reached them that war had begun in the: Ohio country
beyond the Susquehannah, and that an expedition against the
French had gone there from Virginia under the command of a young
officer named George Washington. They heard this name then for
the first time and with indifference, of course, not knowing that
it belonged to a man who would become very famous later, and be
honored as no other man in America has ever been honored; but
they understood at once that war-time was no time in which to
plant a new town. The company which had been formed for the
purchase of the Susquehannah lands, and which included such well-
known men as Colonel Eliphalet Dyer and Jedediah Elderkin,
therefore put off the undertaking until peace should come again.

[Illustration: THE WYOMING MASSACRE]

Meanwhile, people in Windham grew anxious about their own safety.
If the Indians were in truth offended, would not the French now
encourage them to take their revenge? That dread of the cruel
savages, which was continually in the minds of all Connecticut
settlers in those early days, increased in "Windham as rumors
reached there, from time to time, of uprisings among the Indians.
On the spring and summer evenings of that year breathless tales
were told about Indian attacks: old tales which, like the one at
the beginning of this story, had been handed down from earlier
days in Connecticut, and new tales of fresh atrocities on the
borders of the northern settlements in Maine and New Hampshire.
The children listened as long as they were allowed and then went
to bed trembling, seeing fierce painted faces and threatening
feather headdresses in every dark shadow. Older people asked each