That
and many a subsequent night passed without alarm. The season continued to
advance, and the laborers pursued their toil to its close, without another
appeal to their courage, or any additional reasons for vigilance. Whittal
Ring followed his colts with impunity, among the recesses of the
neighboring forests; and the herds of the family went and came, as long as
the weather would permit them to range the woods, in regularity and peace.
The period of the alarm, and the visit of the agents of the Crown, came to
be food for tradition; and during the succeeding winter, the former often
furnished motive of merriment around the blazing fires that were so
necessary to the country and the season.
Still there existed in the family a living memorial if the unusual
incidents of that night. The captive remained, long after the events
which had placed him in the power of the Heathcotes were beginning to be
forgotten.
A desire to quicken the seeds of spiritual regeneration, which, however
dormant they might be, old Mark Heathcote believed to exist in the whole
family of man, and consequently in the young heathen as well as in others,
had become a sort of ruling passion in the Puritan.
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