Chapter 15

"Did Heaven look on,
And would not take their part?--
--: Heaven rest them now!"

Macbeth.

"We will be thankful for this blessing," said Content, as he aided the
half-unconscious Ruth to mount the ladder, yielding himself to a feeling
of nature that said little against his manhood. "If we have lost one, that
we loved, God hath spared our own child."

His breathless wife threw herself into a seat, and folding the treasure to
her bosom, she whispered rather than said aloud--"From my soul, Heathcote,
am I grateful!"

"Thou shieldest the babe from my sight," returned the father, stooping to
conceal a tear that was stealing down his brown cheek, under a pretence of
embracing the child--but suddenly recoiling, he added in alarm--"Ruth!"

Startled by the tone in which her husband uttered her name, the mother
threw aside the folds of her dress, which still concealed the girl, and
stretching her out to the length of an arm, she saw that, in the hurry of
the appalling scene, the children had been exchanged, and that she had
saved the life of Martha!

Notwithstanding the generous disposition of Ruth, it was impossible to
repress the feeling of disappointment which came over her with the
consciousness of the mistake. Nature at first had sway, and to a degree
that was fearfully powerful.

"It is not our babe!" shrieked the mother, still holding the child at the
length of her arm, and gazing at its innocent and terrified countenance,
with an expression that Martha had never yet seen gleaming from eyes that
were, in common, so soft and so indulgent.

"I am thine! I am thine!" murmured the little trembler, struggling in vain
to reach the bosom that had so long cherished her infancy. "If not thine,
whose am I?"

The gaze of Ruth was still wild, the workings of her features hysterical.

"Madam--Mrs. Heathcote--mother!" came timidly, and at intervals, from the
lips of the orphan. Then the heart of Ruth relented. She clasped the
daughter of her friend to her breast, and Nature found a temporary relief
in one of those frightful exhibitions of anguish, which appear to threaten
the dissolution of the link which connects the soul with the body.

"Come, daughter of John Harding," said Content, looking around him with
the assumed composure of a chastened man, while natural regret struggled
hard at his heart; "this has been God's pleasure; it is meet that we kiss
his parental hand. Let us be thankful," he added, with a quivering lip but
steady eye, "that even this mercy hath been shown. Our babe is with the
Indian, but our hopes are far beyond the reach of savage