"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withdrawn another bolt, and, looking him steadily in the face, she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