d not that she had
been all the time in correspondence with Joy, and with him had
concerted the plan whereby he had been betrayed into the hands of the
savage, to be outraged and mocked, and made to suffer all but the
bitterness of death. He gnashed his teeth with rage as these
reflections stormed through his mind, and, far from being grateful for
his deliverance, resolved to exert the whole force and subtlety of
which he was capable, to revenge himself on his tormentors. The fire
of his indignation burnt not so fiercely against the Pequot, yet he,
too, was embraced in the schemes for vengeance, for Spikeman fully
comprehended, from his parting words, that the enmity betwixt them
could be satisfied only by the destruction of one or both. Turning all
these things over in his mind, he quickly formed a plan, which he
determined to put as soon as possible into execution.

The dawn broke before his guides left the Assistant; but it was too
early to venture to return home, instead of which, he sought his
store-house, and there passed, meantime, awhile, brooding over schemes
of revenge. Of himself he was powerless; it was therefore necessary to
set other forces at work, and, in the letters which had been received
reflecting on the character of the Knight, he thought he saw the means
of driving, not only him, but Arundel also, out of the colony; and
they being once removed, he trusted to his ingenuity to rid himself of
the simple soldier and the Indian. The political power of the colony,
in short, was to be compelled to effect his private designs. This, in
the condition of the little State, was no difficult enterprise. In a
strange land, hemmed in by savages, whose power they were unable to
estimate with any degree of certainty, and who, however contemptible
singly, were formidable by reason of their number--upon whose
friendship they could never securely rely--on the eve of a war,
probably, with the Taranteens--distrustful of even some of their own
people, who murmured at the severity of the discipline they were
subjected to--the government felt that they had need of all the eyes
of Argus, and of as many ears, to guard against the dangers by which
they were beset. They were like, in one respect, to the timorous
rabbit, snuffing the faintest hint of danger in the breeze; but unlike
him in that, they sought safety, not in avoiding, but in anticipating
and confronting danger.

"Dear life!" cried Dame Spikeman, as the haggard fa