"Of thee! That cannot well be. Do I not see that thou art grown into the condition of a woman, that thy little tresses of brown have become the jet black and flowing hair that becomes thy years, and that thou hast the stature, and, I say it not in idleness of speech, Martha, for thou knowest my tongue is no vain flatterer, but do I not see that thou hast grown into all the excellence of a most comely maiden! But 'tis not thus, or rather 'twas not thus, with her we mourn; for till this hour have I ever pictured my sister the little innocent we sported with that gloomy night she was snatched from our arms by the cruelty of the savage.' 66 'And what hath changed this pleasing image of our Ruth?" asked his companion, half covering her face to conceal the still deeper glow of female gratification, which had been kindled by the words just heard. I often think of her as thou hast described, nor do I now see why we may not still believe her, if she yet live, all that we could desire to see.' 66 "That cannot be the delusion is gone, and in its place a frightful truth has visited me. Here is Whittal Ring, whom we lost a boy; thou seest he is returned a man and a savage! No, no; my sister is no longer the child I loved to think her, but one grown into the estate of womanhood." "Thou thinkest of her unkindly, while thou thinkest of others far less endowed by nature with too much indulgence, for thou rememberest, Mark, she was ever of more pleasing aspect than any that we knew." "I know not that I say not that I think not that. But be she what hardships and exposure may have made her, still must Ruth Heathcote be far too good for an Indian wigwam. Oh! 'tis horrible to believe that she is the bond-woman, the servitor, the wife of a savage!" Martha recoiled, and an entire minute passed, during which she made no reply. It was evident that the revolting idea, for the first time, crossed her mind, and all the natural feelings of gratified and maiden pride vanished before the genuine and pure sympathies of a female bosom. "This cannot be," she at length murmured-"it can never be! Our Ruth must still remember the lessons taught her in infancy. She knoweth she is born of Christian lineage! of reputable name! of exalted hope! of glorious promise!" 66 Thou seest by the manner of Whittal, who is of greater age, how little of that taught, can withstand the wily savage.' "But Whittal faileth of Nature's gifts; he hath ever been below the rest of men in understanding. "And yet to what degree of Indian cunning hath he already attained!" 66 66 But Mark," rejoined his companion, timidly, as if, while she felt all its force, she only consented to urge the argument, in tenderness to the harassed feelings of the brother, we are of equal years; that which hath happened to me may well have been the fortune of our Ruth." "Dost mean that being unespoused thyself, or that having, at thy years, inclinations that are free, my sister may have escaped the bitter curse of being the wife of a Narragansett; or what is not less frightful, the slave of his humours?" 66 Truly I mean little else than the former." 66 "And not the latter," continued the young man, with a quickness that showed some sudden revolution in his thoughts. 'But though with opinions that are decided, and with kindness awakened in behalf of one favoured, thou hesitatest, Martha, it is not like that a girl left in the fetters of savage life would so long pause to think. Even here in the settlements, all are not difficult of judgment as thou!" The long lashes vibrated above the dark eyes of the maiden, and for an instant it seemed as if she had no intention to reply. But, looking timidly aside, she answered in voice so low that her com panion scarcely gathered the meaning of that she uttered. "I know not how I may have earned this false character among my friends," she said, "for to me it ever seemeth that what I feel and think is but too easily known.' 66 Then is the smart gallant from the Hartford town, who cometh and goeth so often between this distant settlement and his father's house, better assured of his success than I had thought. He will not journey the long road much oftener alone!" "I have angered thee, Mark, or thou wouldst not speak with so cold an eye to one who hath ever lived with thee in kind ness. "I do not speak in anger, for 'twould be both unreasonable and unmanly to deny all of thy sex right of choice, but yet it doth seem right that, when taste is suited and judgment appeased, there should be little motive for withholding speech." "And wouldst thou have a maiden of my years in haste to believe that she was sought, when haply it may be that he of whom you speak is in quest of thy society and friendship, rather than of my favour.' "Then might he spare much labour and some bodily suffering, unless he finds great pleasure in the saddle, for I know not a youth in the Connecticut colony for whom I have smaller esteem. Others may see matter of approval in him, but, to me, he is of bold speech, ungainly air, and great disagreeableness of dis course. "I am happy that at last we find ourselves of one mind, for that thou sayest of the youth is much as I have long considered him." "Thou! Thou thinkest of the gallant thus! Then why dost listen to his suit? I had believed thee a girl too honest, Martha, to affect such niceties of deception. With this opinion of his character, why not refuse his company?" "Can a maiden speak too hastily?" "And if here, and ready to ask thy favour, the answer would be 66 'No;" said the girl, raising her eyes for an instant, and bashfully meeting the eager look of her companion, though she uttered the monosyllable firmly. N Mark seemed bewildered. An entirely new and a novel idea took possession of his brain. The change was apparent by his altering countenance, and a cheek that glowed like flame. What he might have said, most of our readers over fifteen may presume, but, at that moment, the voices of those who had accompanied Whittal to the ruin were heard on their return, and Martha glided away so silently, as to leave him for a moment ignorant of her absence. CHAPTER XXII. 'Oh-when amid the throngs of men The heart grows sick of hollow mirth, Bryant's "Skies." THE day was the Sabbath. This religious festival, which is even now observed in most of the States of the Union with a strictness that is little heeded in the rest of Christendom, was then reverenced with a severity, suited to the austere habits of the colonists. The circumstance that one should journey on such a day, had attracted the observation of all in the hamlet, but, as the stranger had been seen to ride towards the dwelling of the Heathcotes, and the times were known to teem with more than ordinary interests to the province, it was believed that he found his justification in some apology of necessity. Still none ventured forth to inquire into the motive of this extraordinary visit. At the end of an hour, the horseman was seen to depart as he had arrived, seemingly urged on by the calls of some pressing emergency. He had in truth proceeded further with his tidings, though the lawfulness of discharging even this imperious duty on the Sabbath, had been gravely considered in the councils of those who had sent him. Happily they had found, or thought they had found, in some of the narratives of the sacred volume, a sufficient precedent to bid their messenger proceed. In the meantime, the unusual excitement, which had been so unexpectedly awakened in the dwelling of the Heathcotes, began to subside in that quiet which is in so beautiful accordance with the sacred character of the day. The sun rose bright and cloudless above the hills, every vapour of the past night melting before his genial warmth, into the invisible element. The valley then lay in that species of holy calm, which conveys so sweet and so forcible an appeal to the heart. The world presented a picture of the glorious handiwork of him, who seems to invite the gratitude and adoration of his creatures. To the mind yet untainted, there is exquisite loveliness and even God-like repose in such a scene. The universal stillness permits the softest natural sounds to be heard, and the buzz of the bee, or the wing of the humming-bird reaches the ear like the loud notes of a general anthem. This temporary repose is full of meaning. It should teach how much of the beauty of this world's enjoyments, how much of its peace, and even how much of the comeliness of nature itself, is dependant on the spirit by which we are actuated. When man reposes, all around him seems anxious to contribute to his rest, and when he abandons the contentions of grosser interests, to elevate his spirit, all living things appear to unite in worship. Although this apparent sympathy of nature may be less true than imaginative, its lesson is not destroyed, since it sufficiently shows that what man chooses to consider good in this world is good, and that most of its strife and deformities proceed from his own perversity. The tenants of the valley of the Wish-Ton-Wish were little wont to disturb the quiet of the Sabbath. Their error lay in the other extreme, since they impaired the charities of life by endeavouring to raise man altogether above the weakness of his nature. They substituted the revolting aspect of a sublimated austerity, for that gracious though regulated exterior, by which all in the body may best illustrate their hopes, or exhibit their gratitude. The peculiar air of those of whom we write was generated by the error of the times and of the country, though something of its singularly rigid character might have been derived from the precepts and example of the individual, who had the direction of the spiritual interests of the parish. As this person will have further connexion with the matter of the legend, he shall be more familiarly introduced in its pages. The Rev. Meek Wolfe was, in spirit, a rare combination of the humblest self-abasement and of fierce spiritual denunciation. Like so many others of his sacred calling in the colony he inhabited, he was not only the descendant of a line of priests, but it was his greatest earthly hope that he should also become the progenitor of a race, in whom the ministry was to be perpetuated as severely as if the regulated formula of the Mosaic dispensation were still in existence. He had been educated in the infant college of Harvard, an institution that the emigrants from England had the wisdom and enterprise to found, within the first five and twenty years of their colonial residence. Here this scion of so pious and orthodox a stock had abundantly qualified himself for the intellectual warfare of his future life, by regarding one set of opinions so steadily, as to leave little reason to apprehend he would ever abandon the most trifling of the outworks of his faith. No citadel ever presented a more hopeless curtain to the besieger, than did the mind of this zealot to the efforts of conviction; for, on the side of his opponents, he contrived that every avenue should be closed, by a wall blank as indomitable obstinacy could oppose. He appeared to think that all the minor conditions of argument and reason had been disposed of by his ancestors, and that it only remained for him to strengthen the many defences of his subject, and now and then to scatter, by a fierce sortie, the doctrinal skirmishers who might occasionally approach his parish. There was a remarkable singleness of mind in this religionist which, while it in some measure rendered even his bigotry respectable, greatly aided in clearing the knotty subject, with which he dealt, of much embarrassing matter. In his eyes, the straight and narrow path would hold but few besides his own flock. He admitted some fortuitous exceptions, in one or two of the nearest parishes, with whose clergymen he was in the habit of exchanging pulpits, and perhaps, here and there, in a saint of the other hemisphere, or of the more distant towns of the colonies, the brightness of whose faith was something aided, in his eyes, by distance, as this opaque globe of ours is thought to appear a ball of light to those who inhabit its satellite. In short, there was an admixture of seeming charity, with an exclusiveness of hope, an unweariness of exertion, with a coolness of exterior, a disregard of self, with the most complacent security, and an uncomplaining submission to temporal evils, with the loftiest spiritual pretensions, that in some measure rendered him a man as difficult to comprehend as to describe. At an early hour in the forenoon, a little bell, that was suspended in an awkward belfry perched on the roof of the meeting-house, began to summon the congregation to the place of worship. The call was promptly obeyed, and ere the first notes had reached the echoes of the hills, the wide and grassy streets was covered with family groups, all taking the same direction. Foremost in each little party walked the austere father, perhaps bearing on his arm a suckled infant, or some child yet too young to sustain its own weight, while at a decent distance followed the equally grave matron, casting oblique and severe glances at the little troop around her, in whom acquired habits had yet some conquests to obtain over the lighter impulses of vanity. Where there was no child to need support, or where the mother chose to assume the office of bearing her infant in person, the man was seen to carry one of the heavy muskets of the day; and when his arms were otherwise employed, the stoutest of his boys served in the capacity of armour-bearer. But in no instance was this needful precaution neglected, the state of the province and the character of the enemy requiring that vigilance should mingle even with their devotions. There was no loitering on the path, no light and worldly discourse by the way, nor even any salutations, other than those grave and serious recognitions by hat and eye, which usage tolerated as the utmost limit of courtesy on the weekly festival. When the bell changed its tone, Meek appeared from the gate of the fortified house, where he resided in quality of castellain, on accoun of its public character, its additional security, and the circumttance that his studious habits permitted him to discharge the trust with less waste of manual labour than it would cost the village swere the responsible_office confided to one of more active habits., His consort followed, but at even a greater distance than that taken by the wives of other men, as if she felt the awful necessity of averting even the remotest possibility of scandal from one of so sacred a profession. Nine offspring of various ages, and |