ed, was considered intense, even by his brother
Loyalists of the Niagara frontier.

"The Squire kind o' sees his boys' blood when the sky's red," said
they in explanation. But Bedell was so much an enthusiast that he
could almost rejoice because his three stark sons had gained the prize
of death in battle. He was too brave to hate the fighting-men he had
so often confronted; but he abhorred the politicians, especially the
intimate civic enemies on whom he had poured scorn before the armed
struggle began. More than any he hated Ezra Winthrop, the lawyer,
arch-revolutionist of their native town, who had never used a weapon
but his tongue. And now his Ruth, the beloved and only child left to
his exiled age, had confessed her love for Ezra Winthrop's son! They
had been boy and girl, pretty maiden and bright stripling together,
without the Squire suspecting--he could not, even now, conceive
clearly so wild a thing as their affection! The confession burned in
his heart like veritable fire,--a raging anguish of mingled loathing
and love. He stood now gazing at Ruth dumbly, his hands clenched,
head sometimes mechanically quivering, anger, hate, love, grief,
tumultuous in his soul.

Ruth glanced up--her father seemed about to speak--she bowed again,
shuddering as though the coming words might kill. Still there was
silence,--a long silence. Bedell stood motionless, poised, breathing
hard--the silence oppressed the girl--each moment her terror
increased--expectant attention became suffering that demanded his
voice--and still was silence--save for the dull roar of Niagara that
more and more pervaded the air. The torture of waiting for the
words--a curse against her, she feared--overwore Ruth's endurance. She
looked up suddenly, and John Bedell saw in hers the beloved eyes of
his dead wife, shrinking with intolerable fear. He groaned heavily,
flung up his hands despairingly, and strode out toward the river.

How crafty smooth the green Niagara sweeps toward the plunge beneath
that perpetual white cloud above the Falls! From Bedell's clearing
below Navy Island, two miles above the Falls, he could see the swaying
and rolling of the mist, ever rushing up to expand and overhang. The
terrible stream had a profound fascination for him, with its racing
eddies eating at the shore; its long weeds, visible through the clear
water, trailing close down to the bottom; its inexorable, eternal,
onward pouring. Because it was so mighty and so th