the forest, reached the first Neutral town. Advancing thence, they
visited in turn eighteen others; and their progress was a storm of
maledictions. Brebeuf especially was accounted the most pestilent of
sorcerers. The Hurons, restrained by a superstitious awe, and unwilling
to kill the priests, lest they should embroil themselves with the French
at Quebec, conceived that their object might be safely gained by stirring
up the Neutrals to become their executioners. To that end, they sent two
emissaries to the Neutral towns, who, calling the chiefs and young
warriors to a council, denounced the Jesuits as destroyers of the human
race, and made their auditors a gift of nine French hatchets on condition
that they would put them to death. It was now that Brebeuf, fully
conscious of the danger, half starved and half frozen, driven with
revilings from every door, struck and spit upon by pretended maniacs,
beheld in a vision that great cross, which as we have seen, moved onward
through the air, above the wintry forests that stretched towards the land
of the Iroquois. [ See ante, chapter 9 second last paragraph (page 109). ]

Chaumonot records yet another miracle. "One evening, when all the chief
men of the town were deliberating in council whether to put us to death,
Father Brebeuf, while making his examination of conscience, as we were
together at prayers, saw the vision of a spectre, full of fury, menacing
us both with three javelins which he held in his hands. Then he hurled
one of them at us; but a more powerful hand caught it as it flew: and
this took place a second and a third time, as he hurled his two remaining
javelins. . . . Late at night our host came back from the council,
where the two Huron emissaries had made their gift of hatchets to have us
killed. He wakened us to say that three times we had been at the point
of death; for the young men had offered three times to strike the blow,
and three times the old men had dissuaded them. This explained the
meaning of Father Brebeuf's vision." [ Chaumonot, Vie, 55. ]