talking; but as their appetites diminished their curiosity increased,
and there was much to be told and heard on both sides. With all the
English intelligence Lois was, of course, well acquainted; but she
listened with natural attention to all that was said about the new
country, and the new people among whom she had come to live. Her father
had been a Jacobite, as the adherents of the Stuarts were beginning at
this time to be called. His father, again, had been a follower of
Archbishop Laud; so Lois had hitherto heard little of the conversation,
and seen little of the ways of the Puritans. Elder Hawkins was one of
the strictest of the strict, and evidently his presence kept the two
daughters of the house considerably in awe. But the widow herself was a
privileged person; her known goodness of heart (the effects of which
had been experienced by many) gave her the liberty of speech which was
tacitly denied to many, under penalty of being esteemed ungodly if they
infringed certain conventional limits. And Captain Holdernesse and his
mate spoke out their minds, let who would be present. So that on this
first landing in New England, Lois was, as it were, gently let down
into the midst of the Puritan peculiarities, and yet they were
sufficient to make her feel very lonely and strange.

The first subject of conversation was the present state of the
colony--Lois soon found out that, although at the beginning she was not
a little perplexed by the frequent reference to names of places which
she naturally associated with the old country. Widow Smith was
speaking: 'In the county of Essex the folk are ordered to keep four
scouts, or companies of minute-men; six persons in each company; to be
on the look-out for the wild Indians, who are for ever stirring about
in the woods, stealthy brutes as they are! I am sure, I got such a
fright the first harvest-time after I came over to New England, I go on
dreaming, now near twenty years after Lothrop's business, of painted
Indians, with their shaven scalps and their war-streaks, lurking behind
the trees, and coming nearer and nearer with their noiseless steps.'

'Yes,' broke in one of her daughters; 'and, mother, don't you remember
how Hannah Benson told us how her husband had cut down every tree near
his house at Deerbrook, in order that no one might come near him, under
cover; and how one evening she was a-sitting in the twilight, when all
her family were gone to bed, and her husband gone