The start, the exclamation, and the tremor that succeeded all denoted the extent of this man’s surprise.  It was some little time, even, before he could recover from his alarm, and then he let himself be known by his answer.

“Massy!” exclaimed Joel Strides, who ordinarily gave this doric sound to the word ’mercy’—­“Massy, captain, is it you! I should as soon thought of seeing a ghost!  What in natur’ has brought you out of the stockade, sir?”

“I think that is a question I might better ask you, Mr. Strides.  My orders were to keep the gate close, and for no one to quit the court-yard even, until sent on post, or called by an alarm.”

“True, sir—­quite true—­true as gospel.  But let us moderate a little, captain, and speak lower; for the Lord only knows who’s in our neighbourhood.  Who’s that with you, sir?—­Not the Rev. Mr. Woods, is it?”

“No matter who is with me. He has the authority of my commands for being here, whoever he may be, while you are here in opposition to them.  You know me well enough, Joel, to understand nothing but the simple truth will satisfy me.”

“Lord, sir, I am one of them that never wish to tell you anything but truth.  The captain has known me now long enough to understand my natur’, I should think; so no more need be said about that.”

“Well, sir—­give me the reason—­and see that it is given to me without reserve.”

“Yes, sir; the captain shall have it.  He knows we scrambled out of our houses this afternoon a little onthinkingly, Injin alarms being skeary matters.  It was an awful hurrying time!  Well, the captain understands, too, we don’t work for him without receiving our wages; and I have been laying up a little, every year, until I’ve scraped together a few hundred dollars, in good half-joes; and I bethought me the money might be in danger, should the savages begin to plunder; and I’ve just came out to look a’ter the money.”

“If this be true, as I hope and can easily believe to be the case, you must have the money about you, Joel, to prove it.”

The man stretched forth his arm, and let the captain feel a handkerchief, in which, sure enough, there was a goodly quantity of coin.  This gave him credit for truth, and removed all suspicion of his present excursion being made with any sinister intention.  The man was questioned as to his mode of passing the stockade, when he confessed he had fairly clambered over it, an exploit of no great difficulty from the inside.  As the captain had known Joel too long to be ignorant of his love of money, and the offence was very pardonable in itself, he readily forgave the breach of orders.  This was the only man in the valley who did not trust his little hoard in the iron chest at the Hut; even the miller reposing that much confidence in the proprietor of the estate; but Joel was too conscious of dishonest intentions himself to put any unnecessary faith in others.