and thy country a service, and that without dabbling in pursuits foreign to her comprehension."

The sturdy yeoman, on whom this rich gift of Providence had been dispensed, raised his hat, and placing it decently before his face, he offered up a silent thanksgiving for the favour. Then transferring his captive to the keeping of his superior and kinsman, he was soon seen striding over the fields, towards his upland dwelling, with a heavy foot, though with a light heart.

In the mean time, Dudley and his companion bestowed a more particular attention on the silent and nearly motionless object of their curiosity. Though the captive appeared to be of middle age, his eye was unmeaning, his air timid and uncertain, and his form cringing and ungainly. In all these particulars he was seen to differ from the known peculiarities of a native warrior.

Previously to departing, Reuben Ring had explained that while traversing the woods, on that duty of watchfulness to which the state of the colony, and some recent signs had given rise, this wandering person had been encountered and secured, as seemed necessary to the safety of the settlement. He had neither sought, nor avoided his captor; but when questioned concerning his tribe, his motive for traversing those hills, and his future intentions, no satisfactory reply could be extracted. He had scarcely spoken, and the little that he said was uttered in a jargon, between the language of his interrogator and the dialect of some barbarous nation. Though there was much in the actual state of the colonies, and in the circumstances in which this wanderer had been found, to justify his detention, little had in truth been discovered, to supply a clue either to any material facts in his 'history, or to any of his views in being in the mmediate vicinity of the valley.

Guided only by this barren information, Dudley and his companion endeavoured, as they moved towards the hamlet, to entrap their prisoner into some confession of his object, by putting their questions with a sagacity not unusual to men in remote and difficult situations, where necessity and danger are apt to keep alive all the native energies of the human mind. The answers were little connected and unintelligible, sometimes seeming to exhibit the finest subtlety of savage cunning, and at others, to possess the mental helplessness of appearing the most abject fatuity.

CHAPTER IX.

"I am not prone to weeping, as our sex

Commonly are:-

But I have

That honourable grief lodged here, which burns
Worse than tears drown."

Winter's Tale.

Ir the pen of a compiler, like that we wield, possessed the mechanical power of the stage, it would be easy to shift the scenes of this legend, as rapidly and effectively as is required for its right understanding, and for the proper maintenance of its interest. That which cannot be

done with the magical aid of machinery, must be attempted by less ambitious, and, we fear, by far less efficacious means.

At the same early hour of the day, and at no great distance from the spot where Dudley announced his good fortune to his brother Ring, another morning meeting had place, between persons of the same blood and connexions. From the instant when the pale light that precedes the day was first seen in the heavens, the windows and doors of the considerable dwelling on the opposite side of the valley had been unbarred. Ere the glow of the sun had gilded the sky over the outline of the eastern woods, this example of industry and providence was followed by the inmates of every house in the village, or on the surrounding hills; and by the time the golden globe itself was visible above the trees, there was not a human being in all that settlement, of proper age and health, who was not actively afoot.