“Oh! I can have no apprehensions of gentlemen of your appearance,” said the divine, with a smirk. “It is the natives that I apprehend.”
“Natives! I have the honor to be one, I assure you, sir.”
“Nay, I beg that I may be understood—I mean the Indians; they who do nothing but rob, and murder, and destroy.”
“And scalp!”
“Yes, sir, and scalp too,” continued the clergyman, eying his companion a little suspiciously; “the copper-colored, savage Indians.”
“And did you expect to meet those nose-jeweled gentry in the neutral ground?”
“Certainly; we understand in England that the interior swarms with them.”
“And call you this the interior of America?” cried Lawton, again halting, and staring the other in the face, with a surprise too naturally expressed to be counterfeited.
“Surely, sir, I conceive myself to be in the interior.”
“Attend,” said Lawton, pointing towards the east. “See you not that broad sheet of water which the eye cannot compass? Thither lies the England you deem worthy to hold dominion over half the world. See you the land of your nativity?”