interest."

Another summons from Content, who had now led the nag loaded with the
carcass of the sheep without the postern, cut short the secret conference.
Eben Dudley, having received the coin, hastened to follow. But the
distance to the out-buildings was sufficient to enable him to effect his
mysterious purpose without discovery. Whilst Content endeavored to calm
the apprehensions of his wife, who still persisted in sharing his danger,
by such reasons as he could on the instant command, the credulous Dudley
placed the thin piece of silver between his teeth, and, with a pressure
that denoted the prodigious force of his jaws, caused it to assume a
beaten and rounded shape. He then slily dropped the battered coin into the
muzzle of his gun, taking care to secure its presence, until he himself
should send it on its disenchanting message, by a wad torn from the lining
of part of his vestments. Supported by this redoubtable auxiliary, the
superstitious but still courageous borderer followed his companion,
whistling a low air that equally denoted his indifference to danger of an
ordinary nature, and his sensibility to impressions of a less earthly
character.

They who dwell in the older districts of America, where art and labor
have united for generations to clear the earth of its inequalities, and to
remove the vestiges of a state of nature, can form but little idea of the
thousand objects that may exist in a clearing, to startle the imagination
of one who has admitted alarm, when seen in the doubtful light of even a
cloudless moon. Still less can they who have never quitted the old world,
and who, having only seen, can only imagine fields smooth as the surface
of tranquil water, picture the effect produced by those lingering
remnants, which may be likened to so many mouldering monuments of the
fallen forest scattered at such an hour over a broad surface of open land.