From the western window Miles watched them go. He had hoped to be allowed to slip forth from the house and see them start upon their expedition; at least get a last glimpse of Captain Standish, who, perhaps, in the confusion, would forget he was angry and say, "Good-morrow, Miles," as he used. So Miles fetched Master Hopkins's buff-coat, and helped Constance with the breakfast kettle, and mended the fire, and quieted Damaris, and waited and hoped, till he saw the last man of the column disappear over the bluff.
He could run out and seek a dry stick of wood from the pile now, when going forth profited him nothing. He slouched into the wet and the wind, and, in the pashy dooryard, met Ned, who was in a bad temper, because, when he asked his master to let him go on the expedition, he had been contemptuously bidden by Hopkins to "stay home with the women and tend the disgraceful hurts he had taken in his godless brawl."
"If I'd not been such a Jack as to get myself slashed, I might 'a' gone," Ned grumbled now to Miles, as he kicked his heels in the big puddle before the doorstone. "And they'll have some good fighting, I'll wager."
"Do you think surely some of our men will be slain?" Miles questioned, terror-stricken.
"A buff-coat does not make a man immortal," Ned cast over his shoulder, as he stamped into the house.
But Miles, standing in the pouring rain, gazed up the path by which the little company had gone. The sky was thick gray, and the rain, driven by the wind from off the harbor, fell in long, livid streaks. He took up a shiny wet stick from the ground and snapped it slowly in his hands. "The Captain may be killed," he told himself dazedly. "And he does not know that I be sorry."
CHAPTER XXI
BETWEEN MAN AND MAN
ALL that night the rain fell steadily; harking to its slow patter on the roof, Miles thought on those who were tramping the forest, and wondered how they fared. Ned, stretched beside him, save for his regular breathing, lay like one dead, and yonder in the living room he could hear Trug, admitted to shelter from the rain, grumbling in his sleep.