“O mother, what can it be?  Hark at that noise in the street below!  People are crying out in a great rage.  What can it be?  It was so that day a week agone, when news was brought in that some poor settlers had been murdered by Indians, and the Assembly would do nothing but wrangle with the Governor instead of sending out troops to defend our people.  Do you think something can have happened again?”

The mother’s face turned a little pale.

“Heaven send it be not so!” she exclaimed.  “I am always in fear when I hear of such things—­in fear for my old father, and for my brothers.  You know they live away there on the border.  I pray Heaven no trouble will fall upon them.”

Susanna’s eyes dilated with interest, as they always did when her mother talked to her of these unknown relations, away beyond the region of safety and civilization.

To be correct, it should be explained that Susanna was not the real daughter of the woman whom she called mother; for Benjamin Ashley had been twice married, and Susanna had been five years old before Hannah Angell had taken the mother’s place.  But she never thought of this herself.  She remembered no other mother, and the tie between them was strong and tender, despite the fact that there was not more than thirteen years’ difference in age between them, and some girls might have rebelled against the rule of one who might almost have been a sister.

But Susanna had no desire to rebel.  Hannah’s rule was a mild and gentle one, although it was exercised with a certain amount of prim decorum.  Still the girl was shrewd enough to know that her father’s leanings towards the Quaker code had been greatly modified by the influence of his wife, and that she was kept less strictly than he would have kept her had he remained a widower.

Hannah bustled away to the kitchen, and Susanna, after one more longing look out of the window towards the crowd assembled in the open space beyond, followed her, and gave active assistance in the setting of the supper table.

A young man in Quaker garb, and with a broad-brimmed hat in his hand, entered the outer room, engaged in hot dispute with another youth of different aspect, whose face was deeply flushed as if in anger.

“Your Franklin may be a clever man—­I have nothing against that!” he exclaimed hotly; “but if he backs up the stubborn Assembly, and stands idle whilst our settlers are being massacred like sheep, then say I that he and they alike deserve hanging in a row from the gables of their own Assembly House; and that if the Indians break in upon us and scalp them all, they will but meet the deserts of their obstinacy and folly!”

“Friend,” said the other of the sober raiment, “thee speaks as a heathen man and a vain fellow.  The Lord hath given us a commandment to love one another, and to live at peace with all men.  We may not lightly set aside that commandment; we may not do evil that good may come.”