The prayer, though short, was pointed, fervent, and sufficiently personal.
The wheels in the outer room ceased their hum, and a general movement
denoted that all there had arisen to join in the office; while one or two
of their number, impelled by deeper piety or stronger interest, drew near
to the open door between the rooms, in order to listen. With this singular
but characteristic interruption, that particular branch of the discourse,
which had given rise to it, altogether ceased.

"And have we reason to dread a rising of the savages on the borders?"
asked Content, when he found that the moved spirit of his father was not
yet sufficiently calmed, to return to the examination of temporal things;
"one who brought wares from the towns below, a few months since, recited
reasons to fear a movement among the red men."

The subject had not sufficient interest to open the ears of the
stranger. He was deaf, or he chose to affect deafness, to the
interrogatory. Laying his two large and weather-worn, though still
muscular hands, on a visage that was much darkened by exposure, he
appeared to shut out the objects of the world, while he communed deeply,
and, as would seem by a slight tremor, that shook even his powerful
frame, terribly, with his own thoughts.

"We have many to whom our hearts strongly cling, to heighten the smallest
symptom of alarm from that quarter," added the tender and anxious mother,
her eye glancing at the uplifted countenances of two little girls, who,
busied with their light needle-work, sate on stools at her feet. "But I
rejoice to see, that one who hath journeyed from parts where the minds of
the savages must be better understood, hath not feared to do it unarmed."

The traveller slowly uncovered his features, and the glance that his eye