When Helen heard that her husband was appointed to convey a reply to the war-like message of the dark savage whom she had met on the hill, and whose aspect had filled her with terror, she felt an involuntary dread; and gladly would she have dissuaded him from accepting the office of ambassador—­which she knew not he had so earnestly solicited—­had she not been well aware that all such attempts would be useless.  Rodolph was not a man to shrink from any service that was required of him for the public good; and least of all from any service that involved danger and difficulty.  He, however, concealed from his anxious wife the fact that he had recognized in the Narragansett messenger a deadly and determined foe, knowing how greatly—­and perhaps how justly—­her fears would be increased, if she suspected that the Indian champion was one of those who had planned and executed the capture of her eldest son.

But Janet had, as we have seen, remembered the swarthy savage, and the scene with which his countenance was associated in her mind; and when she had an opportunity of speaking to her master in private, she implored him to resign the embassy into other hands, and not thus rashly to encounter a foe, whose public conduct had proved him to be unworthy of confidence, and whose expression of countenance betokened both cruelty and treachery.  But all her arguments were unavailing.  Maitland had undertaken the charge of the expedition at his own request; and he would have felt himself dishonored in now declining it from any personal motives, even had he been, in the least degree, inclined to do so.  On the contrary, his spirit was roused and excited by the very perils he was conscious he might have to encounter; and his desire to obtain, and convey to Helen, some intelligence of Henrich—­ even if that intelligence should still for ever the doubts end hopes, that, in spite of every past circumstance, would sometimes arise in his own heart, and that of his own wife—­was so great that nothing could have turned him from his purpose.  He, therefore, desired the faithful Janet to preserve the same silence on the subject of Coubitant that she had already so judiciously adopted towards her mistress; and assured her that he would neglect no precaution that might preserve him from the treacherous intentions of the Indian, should any such be actually entertained by him.

The next morning Rodolph started at break of day, to convey the reply of the Governor to the Narragansett Sachem, whose tribe inhabited the district now called Rhode Island, lying to the south-west of New Plymouth.  He was accompanied by two friends, and likewise by the interpreter, Squanto.  His faithful dog, Fingal, also showed such a strong desire to follow his master, that, although it was Maitland’s usual custom to leave him at home as a guard, during any of his occasional absences, when his services in hunting were not required, he could not, in this instance, resist his eager pleadings.  Helen, also, assured him that she should feel no apprehension at being deprived of her usual protector, as no danger was likely to menace her dwelling; and the increase in the population of the village, from the arrival of the new settlers, had added an inmate to the family, in the person of Claude Felton, a stout young laboring man, who had become the useful assistant of Maitland in his agricultural occupations, and proved a good and faithful servant.