they placed the baby in this hollow, close to
one of the gates, after dusk. The gend'arme
came out to open the gate to them. They
were suddenly summoned to see a sick
relation, they said; they were known to have an
infant child, which no Huguenot mother
would willingly leave behind to be brought up
by Papists. So the sentinel concluded that
they were not going to emigrate, at least this
time; and locking the great town gates
behind them, he re-entered his little guardroom.
"Now, quick! quick! the string
under the gate! Catch it with your hook
stick. There in the shadow. There! Thank
God! the baby is safe; it has not cried!
Pray God the sleeping-draught be not too
strong!" It was not too strong: father,
mother, and babe escaped to England, and
their descendants may be reading this very
paper.

England, Holland, and the Protestant
states of Germany were the places of refuge
for the Norman and Breton Protestants.
From the south of France escape was more
difficult. Algerine pirates infested the
Mediterranean, and the small vessels in which
many of the Huguenots embarked from the
southern ports were an easy prey. There
were Huguenot slaves in Algiers and Tripoli
for years after the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. Most Catholic Spain caught some
of the fugitives, who were welcomed by the
Spanish Inquisition with a different kind of
greeting from that which the wise, far-seeing
William the Third of England bestowed on
such of them as sought English shelter after
his accession. We will return to the condition
of the English Huguenots presently.
First, let us follow the fortunes of those
French Protestants who sent a letter to the
State of Massachusetts (among whose
historical papers it is still extant) giving an
account of the persecutions to which they
were exposed and the distress they were
undergoing, stating the wish of many of them
to emigrate to America, and asking how far
they might have privileges allowed them for
following out their pursuit of agriculture.
What answer was returned may be guessed
from the fact that a tract of land comprising
about eleven thousand acres at Oxford, near
the present town of Worcester, Massachusetts,
was granted to thirty Huguenots, who
were invited to come over and settle there.
The invitation came like a sudden summons
to a land of hope across the Atlantic. There
was no time for preparations; these might
excite suspicion; they left the " pot boiling
on the fire " (to use the expression of one of
their descendants), and carried no clothes
with them but what they wore. The New
Englanders had too lately escaped from
religious persecution themselves, not to welcome,
and shelter and clothe these poor refugees
when they once arrived at Boston. The
little French colony at Oxford was called a
plantation; and Gabriel Bernon, a descendant
of a knightly name in Froissart, a
Protestant merchant of Rochelle, was
appointed undertaker for this settlement. They
sent for a French Protestant minister, and
assigned to him a salary of forty pounds a
year. They bent themselves assiduously to
the task of cultivating the half-cleared land,
on the borders of which lay the dark forest,
among which the Indians prowled and lurked,
ready to spring upon the unguarded households.
To protect themselves from this
creeping deadly enemy, the French built a
fort, traces of which yet remain. But on the
murder of the Johnson family, the French
dared no longer remain on the bloody spot;
although more than ten acres of ground were
in garden cultivation around the fort; and
long afterwards those who told in hushed,
awe-struck voices of the Johnson murder,
could point to the rose-bushes, the apple and
pear trees yet standing in the Frenchmen's
deserted gardens. Mrs. Johnson was a sister
of Andrew Sigourney, one of the first
Huguenots who came over. He saved his
sister's life by dragging her by main force
through a back door, while the Indians
massacred her children, and shot down her
husband at his own threshold. To preserve
her life was but a cruel kindness.

Gabriel Bernon lived to a patriarchal age,
in spite of his early sufferings in France and
the wild Indian cries of revenge around his
home in Massachusetts. He died rich and
prosperous. He had kissed Queen Anne's
hand, and become intimate with some of the
English nobility, such as Lord Archdale, the
Quaker Governor of Carolina, who had lands
and governments in the American States.
The descendants of the Huguenot refugees
repaid in part their debt of gratitude to
Massachusetts in various ways during the
War of Independence; one, Gabriel
Manigault, by advancing a large loan to further
the objects of it. Indeed, three of the nine
presidents of the old Congress, which
conducted the United States through the
Revolutionary War, were descendants of the
French Protestant refugees. General Francis
Marion, who fought bravely under Washington,
was of Huguenot descent. In fact, both
in England and France, the Huguenot
refugees showed themselves temperate,
industrious, thoughtful, and intelligent people, full
of good principle and strength of character.
But all this is implied in the one circumstance
that they suffered and emigrated to secure
the rights of conscience.

In the State of New York they fondly
called their plantation or settlement by the
name of the precious city which had been
their stronghold, and where they had suffered
so much. New Rochelle was built on the
shore of Long Island Sound, twenty-three
miles from New York. On the Saturday
afternoons the inhabitants of New Rochelle
harnessed their horses to their carts, to
convey the women and little ones; and the