She even remembered a remarkable
expression of his to her brother, "that he was safer from Harper's
knowledge of his person, than he would be without it." Frances
mentioned, with the warmth of youthful admiration, the benevolent
character of his deportment to herself, and gave a minute relation of
his adieus to the whole family.
Dunwoodie at first listened with grave attention; evident satisfaction
followed as she proceeded. When she spoke of herself in connection with
their guest, he smiled with pleasure, and as she concluded, he
exclaimed, with delight,--
"We are safe!--we are safe!"
But he was interrupted, as will be seen in the following chapter.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The owlet loves the gloom of night,
The lark salutes the day,
The timid dove will coo at hand--
But falcons soar away.
--_Song in Duo_.
In a country settled, like these states, by a people who fled their
native land and much-loved firesides, victims of consciences and
religious zeal, none of the decencies and solemnities of a Christian
death are dispensed with, when circumstances will admit of their
exercise. The good woman of the house was a strict adherent to the forms
of the church to which she belonged; and having herself been awakened to
a sense of her depravity, by the ministry of the divine who harangued
the people of the adjoining parish, she thought it was from his
exhortations only that salvation could be meted out to the short-lived
hopes of Henry Wharton.
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