‘It is the Lord,’ she meekly exclaimed:  ’let Him do what seemeth Him good!’

That morning she returned with her husband and Edith to the settlement; and they were accompanied by Brewster, whose pious exhortations and sympathizing kindness were invaluable to the bereaved and afflicted parents.  The grief of Edith was less capable of being suppressed; and it broke out afresh when little Ludovico came to meet them, and inquired for his brother.  From the child they learnt, that while he and Henrich were busily engaged in their several occupations in the wood, two Indians had suddenly rushed from the thick brushwood, and seized on his brother before he had time to fly.  Ludovico was gathering moss at some distance, but he saw what passed, and uttered a cry that attracted the attention of the savages; and one of them east a spear at him with such violence, that, missing its intended mark, it stuck firmly in a tree close behind him.  Seeing this, his noble and courageous brother called out to him to hide among the bushes, and make his way home as quickly as possible; and the Indians, eager to secure the prize they had so long been watching for, hurried away through the forest, dragging Henrich with them.

The murderous attempt made by these savages against the life of Ludovico proved but too clearly that the destruction of Rodolph’s children was their object, and banished every hope that lingered in Helen’s breast; and this conviction of their cruel intentions was still further confirmed by Janet’s account of the look and gesture of the warrior who attended his Chief when the Nausetts first assailed the settlement.  Rodolph had seen, and understood the action; and as he had also learnt through his Wampanoge friends that Tekoa, the son of the Nausett Chief, had fallen in the first encounter, he knew enough of Indian customs to be aware that he, as the slayer, was a marked object of their vengeance.  He had, however, always concealed his suspicions from Helen; and the only effect they had produced on him was causing him, at that time, to prohibit his children from venturing unguarded into the wood, more strictly than he would otherwise have done.

CHAPTER V.

’Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee:  the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.’  PSA. lxxvi,10.

We will now, for a time, leave the settlement—­where the sad news of the capture and supposed death of Henrich had spread a general gloom and consternation—­and follow the subject of their pitying grief, from the time that he was seized and made a prisoner in the hands of the savages.  They did not slay him; for the Lord had work and service in store for the young missionary, and he suffered not a hair of his head to be hurt.