Chapter 13 - Page 2

nature broodeth over some fancied wrong!"

"Surely, we are here rightfully. I have heard my father say, that when the
Lord made me a present to his arms, our valley was a tangled forest, and
that much toil only has made it as it is."

"I hope that what we enjoy, we enjoy rightfully! And yet it seemeth that
the savage is ready to deny our claims."

"And where do these bloody enemies dwell? have they, too, valleys like
this, and do the Christians break into them to shed blood, in the night?"

"They are of wild and fierce habits, Ruth, and little do they know of our
manner of life. Woman is not cherished as among the people of thy father's
race, for force of body is more regarded than kinder ties."

The little auditor shuddered, and when she buried her face deeper in the
bosom of her parent, it was with a more quickened sense of maternal
affection, and with a livelier view, than her infant perception had ever
yet known, of the gentle charities of kindred. When she had spoken, the
matron impressed the final kiss on the forehead of each of the children,
and asking, aloud, that God might bless them, she turned to go to the
performance of duties that called for the exhibition of very different
qualities. Before quitting the room, however, she once more approached the
boy, and, holding the light before his steady eye, she said solemnly--

"I trust my babes to the keeping of a young warrior!"

The look he returned was like the others, cold but not discouraging. A
gaze of many moments elicited no reply; and Ruth prepared to quit the
place, troubled by uncertainty concerning the intentions of the guardian
she left with the girls, while she still trusted that the many acts of
kindness which she had shown him, during his captivity, would not go
without their reward. Her hand rested on the bolt of the door, in
indecision. The moment was favorable to the character of the youth, for
she recalled the manner of his return that night, no less than his former
acts of faith, and she was about to leave the passage for his egress open,
when an uproar arose on the air which filled the valley with all the
hideous cries and yells of a savage onset. Drawing the bolt, the startled
woman descended, without further thought, and rushed to her post, with the
hurry of one who saw only the necessity of exertion in another scene.

"Stand to the timbers, Reuben Ring! Bear back the skulking murderers on
their bloody followers! The pikes! Here, Dudley is opening for thy valor.
The Lord have mercy on the souls of the ignorant heathen!" mingled with
the reports of musketry, the whoops of the warriors, the whizzing of
bullets and arrows, with all the other accompaniments