enemies would return early in the morning and search him out if it should
be possible. Having given him some victuals, which he received thankfully,
I told him to go, but to return the next night to a certain corner of the
fence near my house where he would find a quantity of meal that I would
have well prepared and deposited there for his use.

Early the next morning, Nettles and his company came in while I was
pounding the meal for Allen, and insisted upon my giving him up. I again
told them that I did not know where he was, and that I could not, neither
would I, tell them any thing about him. I well knew that Allen considered
his life in my hands; and although it was my intention not to lie, I was
fully determined to keep his situation a profound secret. They continued
their labor and examined (as they supposed) every crevice, gully, tree and
hollow log in the neighboring woods, and at last concluded that he had
left the country, and gave him up for lost, and went home.

At that time Allen lay in a secret place in the gulph a short distance
above my flats, in a hole that he accidentally found in the rock near the
river. At night he came and got the meal at the corner of the fence as I
had directed him, and afterwards lived in the gulph two weeks. Each night
he came to the pasture and milked one of my cows, without any other vessel
in which to receive the milk than his hat, out of which he drank it. I
supplied him with meal, but fearing to build a fire he was obliged to eat
it raw and wash it down with the milk. Nettles having left our
neighborhood, and Allen considering himself safe, left his little cave and
came home. I gave him his box of money and trinkets, and he went to his
own house at Mount Morris. It was generally considered by the Indians of
our tribe, that Allen was an innocent man, and that the Niagara people
were persecuting him without a just cause. Little Beard, then about to go
to the eastward on public business, charged his Indians not to meddle with