Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/354

338 spot, and the same fate might have overtaken all, had not an Indian who had received some special kindness from the colonel, interfered and prevented the butchery. The family were carried some fifty rods from the house and then released and allowed to return, and by this time the soldiers were armed and the party routed. No sense of safety could be felt then, or for many years thereafter, and from terror and other causes, the house was in time forsaken by its natural owners and passed into other hands, though no tenant, even of sixty years standing has had power to secure to it any other title than that which it still holds—"the Bradstreet house."

For its first occupants possession was nearly over. The vitality which had carried Anne Bradstreet through longer life than could have been imagined possible, was nearly exhausted.

Constant weakness and pain and occasional attacks of severe illness marked all the later years of her life, which for the last three, was a weariness to herself, and a source of suffering to all who saw her suffer. Certain that it could not last long, she began at one time the little autobiographical diary, found among her papers after death, and containing the only personal details that remained, even these being mere suggestions. All her life she had been subject to sudden attacks of faintness, and even as early as 1656, lay for hours unconscious, remaining in a state of pitiful weakness many days thereafter. One of these attacks found record on a loose paper, added by one of her sons to the manuscript book of "Religious Reflections," and showing with what patience she met