Condit, when, the Squire having disappeared in the direction of the stock barns, Charity gave her mother a hasty account of what had happened. Mistress Condit's thin cheeks flushed with anger. "And why did ye stop your father, since the scoundrel so well deserved his beating!"
Charity bit her lip at this reproof.
"I don't know why I did, Mother, in truth," she answered, a catch in her breath. "Except that—oh, he looked like a trapped beast of the woods here, to me—helpless—caught—I could not bear to have him hurt!"
"Humph! Remember, Charity, that these same wild things burn folks' houses i' the West and scalp women and children and dance their horrid war dances around the ruins," returned Mistress Condit grimly. "It were not wise to show too much sympathy for Indians!"
"But perhaps—he is a good Indian!" ventured Charity.
"There are no good Indians," answered her mother in a tone of finality. And with that the subject was closed.
The November days passed. Discouraging, indeed, was the war news that filtered across from the enemy, entrenched in New York City under Sir Henry Clinton, to the Newark Mountains, at the foot of which the Condit farm was situated. There were very few roads, or even paths, between the "Town by the River," as Newark was called then, and the outlying farms and plantations of the First and the Second
