“Well, except for her rheumatism,” replied Silence. She sat down on the stool that David placed for her, and slipped her blanket back from her head. Her beautiful face, full of a grave and delicate stateliness, drooped towards the fire, her smooth fair hair was folded in clear curves like the leaves of a lily around her ears, and she wore a high, transparent, tortoise-shell comb like a coronet in the knot at the back of her head. David Walcott had pulled off his cap and cloak, and stood looking down at her. “Silence is all overwrought by this talk of Indians,” he remarked, presently, and a blush came over his weather-beaten blond face at the tenderness in his own tone. “The Indians have gone back to Canada,” said Goodwife Sheldon, in a magisterial voice. She stirred the porridge faster; it was steaming fiercely. “So I tell her,” said David. Silence looked up in Hannah Sheldon’s sober, masterly face. “Goodwife, may I have a word in private with you?” she asked, in a half-whisper. “As soon as I take the porridge off,” replied Goodwife Sheldon. “God grant it be not the last time she takes the porridge off!” said the old woman. Hannah Sheldon laughed. “Here be Goody Crane in a sorry mind to-night,” said she. “Wait till she have a sup of this good porridge, and I trow she’ll pack off the Indians to Canada in a half-hour!” Hannah began dipping out the porridge. When she had placed generous dishes of it on the table and bidden everybody draw up, she motioned to Silence. “Now, Mistress Silence,” said she, “come into the bedroom if you would have a word with me.” Silence followed her into the little north room opening out of the keeping-room, where Ensign John Sheldon and his wife Hannah had slept for many years. It was icy cold, and the thick fur of frost on the little window-panes sent out sparkles in the candle-light. The two women stood beside the great chintz draped and canopied bed, Hannah holding the flaring candle. “Now, what is it?” said she. “Oh, Goodwife Sheldon!” said Silence. Her face remained quite still, but it was as if one could see her soul fluttering beneath it. “You be all overwrought, as David saith,” cried Goodwife Sheldon, and her voice had a motherly harshness in it. Silence had no mother, and her lover, David Walcott, had none. Hannah was his aunt, and loved him like her son, so she felt towards Silence as towards her son’s betrothed. “In truth I know not what it is,” said Silence, in a kind of reserved terror, “but there has been all day a great heaviness of spirit upon me, and last night I dreamed. All day I have fancied I saw blood here and there. Sometimes, when I have looked out of the window, the whole snow hath suddenly glared with red. Goodwife Sheldon, think you the Indians and the French have in truth gone back to Canada?” Goodwife Sheldon hesitated a moment, then she spoke up cheerily. “In truth have they!” cried she. “John said but this noon that naught of them had been seen for some time.”