He dragged himself back to the house, where he lay down upon his bed, and watched the little patch of sunlight clamber higher up the wall and harked to the drowsy sounds of out-of-doors; then heard nothing clearly till the men tramped in to supper. He sat up slowly, and listened to catch what gossip they might bring; their voices were subdued, and he half guessed what had befallen ere he heard Master Hopkins say solemnly that the good Governor Carver was dead.
Miles thought on it the night long; this death, lonely by itself, was so much more awesome than the crowded sicknesses of the last winter. It seemed the order of life must show some change, but, with the heat of the next rising day, the colonists, as usual, only more silent, filed forth to their labor in the fields. For whether men were well or ill, or lived or died, the corn that was the hope of the settlement must be planted.
CHAPTER XIII
THE TWO EDWARDS
THE fields of New Plymouth at last were sown,—twenty acres of Indian corn and six of English seed, wheat, barley, and pease,—enough to yield an ample harvest. There was besides another field, where the corn, however tall it grew, would never be reaped, for, that the savages might not know the number of the dead, it was planted upon the graves of those who perished in the winter's sickness.
Among them lay John Carver, buried honorably with such poor military pomp as the colony could show its governor, and with a more precious tribute of grief for a good man lost. Near him lay now his wife Katharine, who at his death had grieved and pined, till within six weeks they had dug for her a grave in the new-sown corn-land.
Master Bradford was the new governor; a grave, wise-headed gentleman, with a gift of kindly speech and a shrewd sense of humor, but, to Miles, his greatest claim to respect was that the interpreter Squanto had chosen to dwell with him. For Miles Rigdale, to use Mistress Hopkins's vexed phrase, was "ever beating the street after the heathen savage." It must be owned that to his guardians he was a troublesome boy; not a bad boy, but a careless fellow, who, though he might mean to do well, was likely, when sent to weed in the fields, to be found swimming in the river, or hunting strawberries on the hills, or fishing with Squanto.
Miles did not reason out his new dislike for responsible labor, did not take into account the influence of lazy Edward Lister, or the distractions of the spring and early summer in this new country; but he did feel there was a difference between working with his father, when he knew the harvest would be for his mother and Dolly, and grubbing in a corner of a great field that was the property of no man, but should feed the whole colony. He no longer took pride in his labor, and, if he had taken any, Mistress Hopkins's dissatisfied comments would have destroyed it. Yet, much though he disliked the bustling woman with the sharp tongue, he neither disliked nor feared her the half as much as he disliked and feared her husband.
Years later, when he had come to manhood, Miles was able to think on Master Hopkins with gratitude, for, in all honesty, this severe, undemonstrative man used him like a son, as kindly as he used his own boy, Giles. Except in the stress of planting-time, Miles was never set to tasks beyond his strength; he was well fed,—as the fare of the colony went,—well sheltered, decently clad, while the little store of his father's goods was scrupulously left untouched for his later use.