Chapter 28

"It will have blood; they say, blood
Will have blood!"

Macbeth.

The visiters were Dr. Ergot, the Reverend Meek Wolfe, Ensign Dudley, and
Reuben Ring. Content found these four individuals seated in an outer room,
in a grave and restrained manner, that would have done no discredit to the
self-command of an Indian council. He was saluted with those staid and
composed greetings which are still much used in the intercourse of the
people of the Eastern States of this Republic, and which have obtained for
them a reputation, where they are little known, of a want of the more
active charities of our nature. But that was peculiarly the age of
sublimated doctrines, of self-mortification, and of severe moral
government, and most men believed it a merit to exhibit, on all
occasions, the dominion of the mind over the mere animal impulses. The
usage, which took its rise in exalted ideas of spiritual perfection, has
since grown into a habit, which, though weakened by the influence of the
age, still exists to a degree that often leads to an erroneous estimate of
character.

At the entrance of the master of the house, there was some such decorous
silence as that which is known to precede the communications of the
aborigines. At length Ensign Dudley, in whom matter, most probably in
consequence of its bulk, bore more than an usual proportion to his less
material part, manifested some evidences of impatience that the divine
should proceed to business. Thus admonished, or possibly conceiving that a
sufficient concession had been made to the dignity of man's nature, Meek
opened his mouth to speak.

"Captain Content Heathcote," he commenced, with that mystical involution
of his subject which practice had rendered nearly inseparable from all his
communications; "Captain Content Heathcote, this hath been a day of awful
visitations, and of gracious temporal gifts. The heathen hath been smitten
severely by the hand of the believer, and the believer hath been made to
pay the penalty of his want of faith, by the infliction of a savage
agency. Azazel hath been loosened in our village, the legions of
wickedness have been suffered to go at large in our fields, and yet the
Lord hath remembered his people, and hath borne them through a trial of
blood as perilous as was the passage of his chosen nation through the
billows of the Red Sea. There is cause of mourning, and cause of joy, in
this manifestation of his will; of sorrow that we have merited his anger,
and of rejoicing that enough of redeeming grace hath been found to save
the Gomorrah of our hearts. But I speak to one trained in spiritual
discipline, and schooled in the vicissitudes of the world, and further
discourse is not necessary to