loveliness.

After this memorable act of conscientious self-devotion, years passed away
in quiet, amid a species of negative prosperity. Rumors from the old world
reached the ears of the tenants of this secluded settlement, months after
the events to which they referred were elsewhere forgotten, and tumults
and wars in the sister colonies came to their knowledge only at distant
and tardy intervals. In the mean time, the limits of the colonial
establishments were gradually extending themselves, and valleys were
beginning to be cleared nearer and nearer to their own. Old age had now
begun to make some visible impression on the iron frame of the Captain,
and the fresh color of youth and health, with which his son had entered
the forest, was giving way to the brown covering produced by exposure and
toil. We say of toil, for, independently of the habits and opinions of the
country, which strongly reprobated idleness, even in those most gifted by
fortune, the daily difficulties of their situation, the chase, and the
long and intricate passages that the veteran himself was compelled to
adventure in the surrounding forest, partook largely of the nature of the
term we have used. Ruth continued blooming and youthful, though maternal
anxiety was soon added to her other causes of care. Still, for a long
season, nought occurred to excite extraordinary regrets for the step they
had taken, or to create particular uneasiness in behalf of the future. The
borderers, for such by their frontier position they had in truth become,
heard the strange and awful tidings of the dethronement of one king, of
the interregnum, as a reign of more than usual vigor and prosperity is
called, and of the restoration of the son of him who is strangely enough
termed a martyr. To all these eventful and unwonted chances in the
fortunes of kings, Mark Heathcote listened with deep and reverential
submission to the will of him, in whose eyes crowns and sceptres are
merely the more costly baubles of the world. Like most of his