He had much pity for the poor savages even, although he had suffered sorely at their hands; for he did believe that they had been often ill-used, and cheated, and otherwise provoked to take up arms against us.

Hereupon, Goodwife Stone twirled her spindle very spitefully, and said she would as soon pity the Devil as his children.

The thought of her mangled little girl, and of her dying son, did seem to overcome her, and she dropped her thread, and cried out with an exceeding bitter cry,--"Oh, the bloody heathen! Oh, my poor murdered Molly! Oh, my son, my son!"-- "Nay, mother," said the sick man, reaching out his hand and taking hold of his mother's, with a sweet smile on his pale face,--"what does Christ tell us about loving our enemies, and doing good to them that do injure us?
Let us forgive our fellow-creatures, for we have all need of God's forgiveness.

I used to feel as mother does," he said, turning to us; "for I went into the war with a design to spare neither young nor old of the enemy.
"But I thank God that even in that dark season my heart relented at the sight of the poor starving women and children, chased from place to place like partridges.

Even the Indian fighters, I found, had sorrows of their own, and grievous wrongs to avenge; and I do believe, if we had from the first treated them as poor blinded brethren, and striven as hard to give them light and knowledge, as we have to cheat them in trade, and to get away their lands, we should have escaped many bloody wars, and won many precious souls to Christ." I inquired of him concerning his captivity.