“Dear life!” cried Dame Spikeman, as the haggard face of her husband presented itself in the morning, “where hast thou been all the night?  You look mightily cast down, and—­O Lord!  Heaven forgive me!—­you have a wound on the side of your head.  Husband, what is the matter?”

“Why, dame,” answered the Assistant, “is it a new thing for me to be absent one night?  Bethink thee how often my occasions call me to the plantation?”

“Out upon the weariful plantation!  O, sweetheart!” said the jealous but fond wife, “I like not these absences.  But, how got you this hurt?” she inquired, parting his hair on the temple, and exposing the dried blood.

“It is only a scratch I received in the forest, and hardly worthy thy notice, dame.  But where is Mistress Eveline? and I see not Prudence?”

“The young lady is still in her chamber, and, as for the waiting maid, I heard her but five minutes since singing away as if there were no music in the world but her own.  Truly, it sounded more like a snatch from some profane ballad than a godly hymn.  I will tutor her about this levity.  Now do not be angry, dear life,” added the dame, whose heart was made more tender, and her tongue more communicative, by the anxieties she had suffered during the night, on her husband’s account; “but I have fancied that you looked at the girl oftener, sometimes, than was becoming in a man who had a wedded wife who never said him nay.”

“Fie, Dame,” said the Assistant, laughing, and pinching, and kissing her still tempting cheek; “what crazy fancies be these?  Consider my years, and profession, and dignity, and, most of all, my love for thee.  Why, this is very midsummer madness.”

“I suppose I am foolish,” replied the dame, wiping a tear away, “but I feared, lest the girl might derive some encouragement from it, though otherwise, Prudence is a good lass, and obedient, and I have no other fault to find with her; but I recollect now, when I was a girl, how I did feel when you came near me, and I have not got over all these feelings yet, nor do I choose that Prudence should have them.  So, dear husband, it were safer for the girl that you should look oftener at me, and less at her.”

“My good, and faithful, and loving wife!” exclaimed the Assistant, enclosing her in his arms, and feeling something like compunction at the moment, “you deserve a better mate.  But trouble not thyself with such misgivings.  Do not this wrong, sweet, to thine own charms, and to my profession and station, as one of the congregation and a magistrate.”

“Nay,” answered the pleased wife, “I distrusted thee not so much as the presumption of the damsel; and if the devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, as we know he does, from the precious book, what place is more likely for him to be in than these awful woods, filled with red heathens, whom I take to be little better than his children; and whom would he sooner devour, than a pretty maiden like Prudence?”