As for the Assistant, thus suddenly and unexpectedly reprieved from a shocking death that seemed certain, he was stupified at the abrupt change in his circumstances, and, as he hurried on, half doubted whether it were not a dream.  As he threaded the intricacies of the wood, he had time to compare and weigh events, and was thus enabled to come to some sort of conclusion.  He recollected now many little things in the conduct of Prudence, which would have opened the eyes of any one not blinded by an absurd passion, and saw how, while seeming not averse to his pursuit, she had, in fact, only tempted on from one folly to another, until his whole being lay disclosed to her, without herself making any corresponding return.  He doubted not that she had been all the time in correspondence with Joy, and with him had concerted the plan whereby he had been betrayed into the hands of the savage, to be outraged and mocked, and made to suffer all but the bitterness of death.  He gnashed his teeth with rage as these reflections stormed through his mind, and, far from being grateful for his deliverance, resolved to exert the whole force and subtlety of which he was capable, to revenge himself on his tormentors.  The fire of his indignation burnt not so fiercely against the Pequot, yet he, too, was embraced in the schemes for vengeance, for Spikeman fully comprehended, from his parting words, that the enmity betwixt them could be satisfied only by the destruction of one or both.  Turning all these things over in his mind, he quickly formed a plan, which he determined to put as soon as possible into execution.

The dawn broke before his guides left the Assistant; but it was too early to venture to return home, instead of which, he sought his store-house, and there passed, meantime, awhile, brooding over schemes of revenge.  Of himself he was powerless; it was therefore necessary to set other forces at work, and, in the letters which had been received reflecting on the character of the Knight, he thought he saw the means of driving, not only him, but Arundel also, out of the colony; and they being once removed, he trusted to his ingenuity to rid himself of the simple soldier and the Indian.  The political power of the colony, in short, was to be compelled to effect his private designs.  This, in the condition of the little State, was no difficult enterprise.  In a strange land, hemmed in by savages, whose power they were unable to estimate with any degree of certainty, and who, however contemptible singly, were formidable by reason of their number—­upon whose friendship they could never securely rely—­on the eve of a war, probably, with the Taranteens—­distrustful of even some of their own people, who murmured at the severity of the discipline they were subjected to—­the government felt that they had need of all the eyes of Argus, and of as many ears, to guard against the dangers by which they were beset.  They were like, in one respect, to the timorous rabbit, snuffing the faintest hint of danger in the breeze; but unlike him in that, they sought safety, not in avoiding, but in anticipating and confronting danger.