As the rescuer laid Mr. Harris on the ground, he exclaimed:
“_Hi!_ Massa Harris, didn’t I tell you, great while ago, ‘bym by come sometime or odder?’”
Pompey had escaped before the Indians surrounded the house, and knowing the attachment to Mr. Harris of a tribe a short distance above, and their hostility to those who had invaded the settlement, he was sure of aid if he could summons them in season.
The friendly Indians descended the river rapidly in their canoes, and were only in season to save the life of the whites.
William was brought forth wounded, but not dangerously, and the family assembled in prayer and thanksgiving, while their friendly deliverers were discharging some of the minor offices of their calling and celebrating their victory by some characteristic attentions to the wounded whom the enemy had left on the shores of the Susquehanna.
“Did you not hesitate, my child,” said Mr. Harris to Rebecca, “when death or apostacy was proposed?”
“When _your_ death was the alternative, I did.”
“Where, then, was your faith in Christianity—in its author?”
“Father, I am weak. I owe you obligations—I would sacrifice my life for your comforts; I knew you good—I knew you would decide correctly. My faith, then, was in _you_.”
“In _you_—in you, oh, my more than father. You are the embodiment of that _spirit_ by which I am guided. My faith in you, then—is it not my faith in the creed which you profess, and by which you live?”
No sooner had William recovered from his wounds, than Mr. Harris called Rebecca to him and signified his consent to the union between her and William, and his determination to make their circumstances as comfortable as the state of the neighborhood would allow.
“It is late, now,” said Rebecca to William; “let us separate. The morrow will require our early attention, and Father Harris will be astir early in the morning.”
“And he not the only one,” said William; “for some of us must go down and bring the magistrate up, to perform the ceremony. We will meet early to-morrow morning.”
Before the dawn of the day fixed on for her marriage, Rebecca left her chamber, and hastened along the banks of the river to the jutting promontory that she so much loved. Leaning there upon the side of a rock, she gave vent to all those feelings which spring up in the heart of a girl who stands upon the verge of marriage. Welling up from that heart were the waters of pure, holy affection for Harris, and of deep, abiding love for William. There was no want of all true feelings—no doubt of the high deservings of her lover. But Rebecca’s education was imperfect; it had never eradicated the strong feelings for her own people; it had led her to see how rapid must be their decay, but it had not made her cling with undivided love to those whose superiority in certain points was exhibiting itself in the destruction of the natives; for she saw that the friendship of the whites was as fatal to the Indians as was their enmity. The lands passed as fast by cession as by conquest, and vices were sent with the wampum of peace as readily as with the weapon of war. And while she felt that she could apply no remedy, or _become_ a preventive, she yet felt for those whose blood was in her veins—whose fathers’ fame had been her glory.