Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish

by Beulah Marie Dix

"I understand," the Captain said, with amazing kindness. "I'll go to the spring with you, Miles."

For the second time in his life, Miles stepped out into the night with the Captain, but there was small elation in his heart with the knowledge of his cowardice upon him. He felt a censure in his companion's silence, yet he dared not speak himself, only hurried forward as fast as possible to end the walk. They left the last cottage behind them, passed a menacing clump of bushes, and then, at the head of the path, Miles spoke out, almost in spite of himself: "Pray you, go back, sir. I'm not afraid. I won't be afraid. I'll go alone."

He called back the last, halfway down the path. The pebbles rattled with shocking loudness; there in the thicket, across the sullen brook, something stirred, he knew. With his eyes on the black ground, he stumbled toward the gurgle of the spring, groped for his bucket, fearing lest his hand touch something else, and, seizing it, filled it sparsely at the first dip, then, setting his teeth tight, made himself fill it again, slowly and carefully.

Behind him, as he rose, the bushes all were moving and alive, and something, he knew, pressed close at his heels. He could not hurry with the bucket in his hand, only clamber, step by step, with the breath choked within him, till he came at last to the black pathway above the bluff. Before he could cast a frightened look up the trail, the bucket was quietly taken from him. "You waited here for me?" Miles gasped, and then, "But I wasn't afraid."

"You will not be next time, Soldier Rigdale," Standish answered him, and, putting a hand on his shoulder, kept it there.

Before they were into the thick of the settlement, he spoke again, abruptly: "So you're not happy at Master Hopkins's?"

"I hate it there," Miles said under his breath, and then the hope that the Captain's former words had raised swept back once more, and he caught the other's hand. "Will you take me away from him, sir?" he asked hurriedly. "If I could live with Jack Cooke, anywhere else, I know I could be good."

"I know you could, too," Standish answered. "And I think your father and mother would wish it. But Master Hopkins is your guardian and your kinsman; I can do naught, only try my hand at coaxing, and I'm uncommon ill at that. My faith, I know not why I speak it out to such a babe as you, Miles, but you must say naught of this, remember. Only—if 'twill comfort you for your tattered breeches and the rest of your penances,—so soon as pretext is given me, I am minded to take you from Master Hopkins to live with me."

"With you?" Miles asked in the blankness of joy, and then he must hush, for the candlelight from Master Hopkins's window struck across his face, and an instant later they came into the living room.