about ten o'clock
The men being unencumbered , fled on seeing him , and being remarkably swift of foot , were soon out of his reach . Not so the poor woman with the child on her back : she could not escape ; and at her the savage ruffian fired , killing both her and the infant with the same murderous shot . This double murder was of so unprovoked , so cold-blooded , and atrocious a nature , that it is probable , little as the life of a native was accounted in those days , that my master would have been called upon to answer for his crime before the tribunals of the colony ; but retribution overtook him by another and a speedier course . On the following day my master came out of the house , about ten o'clock in the forenoon , with an axe in one hand , and the fatal rifle , his constant companion , with which he had perpetrated the atrocious deed on the preceding day , in the other , and coming up to me , told me that he was going to a certain spot in an adjoining wood to cut some timber for paling , and that he desired I should come to him two hours after with one of the cars or sledges in use on the farm , to carry home the cut wood . Having said this , he went off , little dreaming of the fate that awaited him . At the time appointed I went with a horse and sledge to the wood , but was much surprised to find that my master was not at the spot where he said he would be ; -- a surprise which was not a little increased by perceiving , from two or three felled sticks that lay around , that he had been there , but had done little -- so little , that he could not have been occupied , as I calculated , for more than a quarter of an hour . Thinking , however , that wherever he had gone he would speedily return , I sat down to await him ; but he came not .