Little Peter was lucky enough to fall into the hands of a kind master.  Among those who came to buy boys off this ship was a man who had himself been stolen from Scotland when he was young.  He felt sorry for little Peter when he saw him put up for sale.  The price the cruel captain asked for him was about fifty dollars.  The Scotchman paid this money, and took Peter for his boy.  He sent him to school in the winter, and treated him kindly.  Peter, for his part, was a good boy, and did his work faithfully.  He staid with his master after his time was out.

When Peter was about seventeen years old, this good master died.  He left to Peter about six hundred dollars in money for being a good boy.  He also gave him his best horse and saddle and all his own clothes.  Some years after this, Peter married, and went to live in the northern part of Pennsylvania.  He was by this time a man of property.

One night, when his wife was away from home, the Indians came about his house.  He got a gun and ran upstairs.  He pointed the gun at the Indians, but they told him that if he would not shoot they would not kill him.  So he came down, and gave himself up as a prisoner.

The Indians treated him very cruelly.  He was with them more than a year.  His sufferings were so great that he wished sometimes that he was dead.  He knew that if he ran away the Indians would probably catch him, and kill him in some cruel way.  But one night, when the Indians were all asleep, he resolved to take the risk.  You may believe that when he had started he ran with all his might.

When daylight came, he hid himself in a hollow tree.  After a while he heard the Indians running all about the tree.  He could hear them tell one another how they would kill him when they found him.  But they did not think to look into the tree.

The next night he ran on again.  He came very near running into a camp of Indians.  But at last he came in sight of the house of a friend.  He was tired out, and starving.  He had hardly any clothes left on him.  He knocked at the door.  The woman who saw him thought that he was an Indian.  She screamed, and the man of the house got his gun to kill him.  But he quickly told his friend that he was no Indian, but Peter Williamson.  Everybody had given him up for dead.  But now all his friends were happy to see him alive once more.  He had twice been carried into slavery,—­once by cruel white men, and once by yet more cruel red men.

SOLD LIKE JOSEPH.—­STORIES OF TWO KIDNAPPED BOYS.

You have heard the beautiful story of Joseph in the Bible.  You remember that he was sold by his brothers.  Then he was carried into Egypt, where he became a great man.

In 1730 there was a little English lad at sea with his uncle, who was the captain of a ship.  Whether the boy’s father and mother were dead or not, history does not tell.  But the boy was sailing on his uncle’s ship, as though he were the captain’s son.