"Clark, he'd turned away with a laugh, and gone out o' the door; and I asked her what she did that for, and she said she was afraid her child would be marked, and if 'twas to be she wanted it where it wouldn't show.
"Then she got up to go home, and says she, 'We'll not speak of this, Reumah, and I'll try not to think of it, so there'll be less likelihood of mischief coming of it.'"
"And it was her child, the older woman's?" cried Kenneth, breathlessly; "and is this what you speak of?" tearing open his shirt bosom as he spoke.
"Yes, that's it, as sure as I'm a living woman!" she answered, gazing curiously at the deep red mark in the form of an anchor on the left breast. "And now you know which o' the two you are."
He drew a long, sighing breath of relief, as one who feels a heavy weight fall from his shoulders, clasped his hands, and lifted his eyes to heaven, his face radiant with unutterable joy and thankfulness, his lips moving, though no sound came from them.
She watched him in wonder and amazement.
"What's the difference," she asked, as he resumed his former attitude, "and how comes it that your mother didn't know by that very mark that you were hers?"
"She died within the hour," he said with emotion; "raising herself in the bed, and looking through the open door, she saw her husband slain, his reeking scalp held aloft by a savage, and with a wild scream she fell back and expired."
"And the rest?"
"The younger Clendenin gained the house barely in time to secure the door before the Indians reached it, and keeping up a vigorous fire through a chink in the wall, his wife, ill as she was, loading for him, there happening to be two guns in the house, he at length succeeded in driving off the enemy.