"I fear none of white blood, nor of Christian parentage: the murderous heathen is in our fields."
"'Tis not a dream. I have seen the glowing eye-balls of a savage. Sleep was little like to come over me, when set upon a watch like this. I thought me that the errand was of unknown character, and that our father was exceedingly aged, and that perchance his senses might be duped, and how an obedient son ought not to be exposed.--Thou knowest, Heathcote, that I could not look upon the danger of my children's father with indifference, and I followed to the nut-tree hillock."
"To the nut-tree! It was not prudent in thee--but the postern?"
"It was open; for were the key turned, who was there to admit us quickly, had haste been needed?" returned Ruth, momentarily averting her face to conceal the flush excited by conscious delinquency. "Though I failed in caution, 'twas for thy safety, Heathcote: But on that hillock, and in the hollow left by a fallen tree, lies concealed a heathen!"
"I passed the nut-wood in going to the shambles of our strange butcher, and I drew the rein to give breath to the nag near it, as we returned with the burthen. It cannot be; some creature of the forest hath alarmed thee."
"Ay! creature, formed, fashioned gifted like ourselves, in all but color of the skin and blessing of the faith."
"This is strange delusion! If there were enemy at hand, would men subtle as those you fear, suffer the master of the dwelling, and truly I may say it without vain-glory, one as likely as another to struggle stoutly for his own, to escape, when an ill-timed visit to the woods had delivered him unresisting into their hands? Go, go, good Ruth; thou mayst have seen a blackened log--perchance the frosts have left a fire-fly untouched, or it may be that some prowling bear has scented out the sweets of thy lately-gathered hives."
Ruth again laid her hand firmly on the arm of her husband, who had withdrawn another bolt, and, looking him steadily in the face, she answered by saying solemnly, and with touching pathos--
"Think'st thou, husband, that a mother's eye could be deceived?"
It might have been that the allusion to the tender beings whose fate depended on his care, or that the deeply serious, though mild and gentle manner of his consort, produced some fresher impression on the mind of Content. Instead of undoing the fastenings of the postern as he had intended, he deliberately drew its bolts again and paused to think.