"So shall fall the pride of vain people; so shall come to grief the preachers of false religion," quoth he. "Truss those fellows to the trees and give them half a dozen of blows apiece as token that we brook no ungodly conduct and hostility to our liberties. And you, king and queen of the May, have you no better things to think about than fiddling and dancing? How if I punish you both?"
"Had I the power I'd punish you for saying it," answered the swain; "but, as I have not, I am compelled to ask that the girl go unharmed."
"Will you have it so, or will you share your lover's punishment?" asked
Endicott.
"I will take all upon myself," said the woman.
The face of the governor softened. "Let the young fellow's hair be cut, in pumpkin-shell fashion," he commanded; "then bring them to me but gently."
He was obeyed, and as the couple came before him, hand in hand, he took a chain of roses from the fallen pole and cast it about their necks. And so they were married. Love had softened rigor and all were better for the assertion of a common humanity. But the May-pole of Merrymount was never set up again. There were no more games and plays and dances, nor singing of worldly music. The town went to ruin, the merrymakers were scattered, and the gray sobriety of religion and toil fell on Pilgrim land again.
THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER
When Charles River was lined with groves and marshes there lived in a cabin, near Brighton, Massachusetts, an ill-fed rascal named Tom Walker. There was but one in the commonwealth who was more penurious, and that was his wife. They squabbled over the spending of a penny and each grudged food to the other. One day as Tom walked through the pine wood near his place, by habit watching the ground—for even there a farthing might be discovered—he prodded his stick into a skull, cloven deep by an Indian tomahawk. He kicked it, to shake the dirt off, when a gruff voice spake: "What are you doing in my grounds?" A swarthy fellow, with the face of a charcoal burner, sat on a stump, and Tom wondered that he had not seen him as he approached.
He replied, "Your grounds! They belong to Deacon Peabody."
"Deacon Peabody be damned!" cried the black fellow; "as I think he will be, anyhow, if he does not look after his own sins a little sharper and a little less curiously after his neighbors'. Look, if you want to see how he is faring," and, pointing to a tree, he called Tom to notice that the deacon's name was written on the bark and that it was rotten at the core. To his surprise, Tom found that nearly every tree had the name of some prominent man cut upon it.