r the rifles of
those it was now known to contain, and it is probable that the truce was
more owing to this circumstance than to any other. In the mean while the
preparations were made for the interment of Hutter. To bury him on the
land was impracticable, and it was Hetty's wish that his body should lie
by the side of that of her mother, in the lake. She had it in her power
to quote one of his speeches, in which he himself had called the lake
the "family burying ground," and luckily this was done without the
knowledge of her sister, who would have opposed the plan, had she known
it, with unconquerable disgust. But Judith had not meddled with the
arrangement, and every necessary disposition was made without her
privity or advice.

The hour chosen for the rude ceremony was just as the sun was setting,
and a moment and a scene more suited to paying the last offices to one
of calm and pure spirit could not have been chosen. There are a mystery
and a solemn dignity in death, that dispose the living to regard the
remains of even a malefactor with a certain degree of reverence. All
worldly distinctions have ceased; it is thought that the veil has been
removed, and that the character and destiny of the departed are now as
much beyond human opinions, as they are beyond human ken. In nothing
is death more truly a leveller than in this, since, while it may be
impossible absolutely to confound the great with the low, the worthy
with the unworthy, the mind feels it to be arrogant to assume a right to
judge of those who are believed to be standing at the judgment seat
of God. When Judith was told that all was ready, she went upon the
platform, passive to the request of her sister, and then she first took
heed of the arrangement. The body was in the scow, enveloped in a sheet,
and quite a hundred weight of stones, that had been taken from the fire
place, were enclosed with it, in order that it might sink. No other
preparation seemed to be thought necessary, though Hetty carried her
Bible beneath her arm.

When all were on board the Ark, the singular habitation of the man whose
body it now bore to its final abode, was set in motion. Hurry was at the
oars. In his powerful hands, indeed, they seemed little more than a pair
of sculls, which were wielded without effort, and, as he was expert in
their use, the Delaware remained a passive spectator of the proceedings.
The progress of the Ark had something of the stately solemnity of a
fun