umstances that had occurred to show that he was a
special mark for the vengeance of Coubitant: and the confidence he felt
in his courage and ability led him--on this occasion, as on many
others--to select him as his ambassador. Two companions were assigned
to him, and Squanto was desired to attend the party as interpreter.

When Helen heard that her husband was appointed to convey a reply to
the war-like message of the dark savage whom she had met on the hill,
and whose aspect had filled her with terror, she felt an involuntary
dread; and gladly would she have dissuaded him from accepting the
office of ambassador--which she knew not he had so earnestly
solicited--had she not been well aware that all such attempts would be
useless. Rodolph was not a man to shrink from any service that was
required of him for the public good; and least of all from any service
that involved danger and difficulty. He, however, concealed from his
anxious wife the fact that he had recognized in the Narragansett
messenger a deadly and determined foe, knowing how greatly--and perhaps
how justly--her fears would be increased, if she suspected that the
Indian champion was one of those who had planned and executed the
capture of her eldest son.

But Janet had, as we have seen, remembered the swarthy savage, and the
scene with which his countenance was associated in her mind; and when
she had an opportunity of speaking to her master in private, she
implored him to resign the embassy into other hands, and not thus
rashly to encounter a foe, whose public conduct had proved him to be
unworthy of confidence, and whose expression of countenance betokened
both cruelty and treachery. But all her arguments were unavailing.
Maitland had undertaken the charge of the expedition at his own
request; and he would have felt himself dishonored in now declining it
from any personal motives, even had he been, in the least degree,
inclined to do so. On the contrary, his spirit was roused and excited
by the very perils he was conscious he might have to encounter; and his
desire to obtain, and convey to Helen, some intelligence of Henrich--
even if that intelligence should still for ever the doubts end hopes,
that, in spite of every past circumstance, would sometimes arise in his
own heart, and that of his own wife--was so great that nothing could
have turned him from his purpose. He, therefore, desired the faithful
Janet to preserve the same silence on the subject