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242
METIPOM’S HOSTAGE

his musket, had set forth through the forest to bear King Philip’s command to Woosonametipom. When the afternoon was half spent, the visitors, all save him they called Wompatannawa, took their departure, and Philip’s company began their preparations for the attack on the garrison at Brookfield, some six miles distant, looking to their weapons and ammunition, painting their bodies afresh and filling their pouches with rations of parched corn or dried fish. Two medicine men gravely made incantations about a circle drawn in the earth wherein lay strange objects; a human hand, dried and colored like the root of a tree, some colored pebbles, a string of wampum twisted about an arrow, the feet of a crow tied together with a red yarn, and other things. They chanted monotonously in low voices and stamped the earth, and sometimes turned their bodies about slowly with their arms upstretched to the brazen sky. Philip had returned to his wigwam for slumber, but Caleb sat disconsolately and moodily outside and with his knife whittled at a bit of wood. To him presently came the Nipmuck, Wompatannawa, and sat beside him and talked. Later the stranger arose and idly wandered