“Put on her shoes, and fold the train of her robe around her feet,” commanded the father. “She said it should be so.” And wonderingly the mother obeyed, for in these awful hours none dared to intrude upon the darkness that clothed Standish more gloomily than the mantle the Angel of Death had lightly laid around the maiden.
Once in the middle of the night, Barbara, rising from her sleepless couch, sought him where he sat alone with Lora, and throwing herself upon her knees beside him, her arms around him, and her head upon his breast, she cried,—
“Oh, Myles, Myles, let us try to bear it together. Do not shut me out of your heart. Oh, Myles, my heart is breaking—comfort me!”
“Hush, wife, hush! What need of words or clamor? Let her rest, let her rest—and leave us alone, good wife, my maid and me—go!”
Then chilled, silenced, well-nigh affrighted, the mother crept away, and left the defeated soldier to his own bitter retrospect.
The brothers, working day and night, fashioned an oaken casket, not of the gruesome shape in use at a later date, but more like a dainty cradle, and the women had spread in it a couch of sweet herbs and the fragrant tips of the balsam fir and the blossoms of the immortelle which they called life-everlasting. A pillow of dried rose-leaves and lavender-blossoms and the hop-flowers that soothe to dreamless slumber was laid ready for the gentle head, and a sheet of fine linen was spread over all.
“The captain said when he brought home that bolt of Hollands linen from Antwerp, that it was for Lora’s wedding clothes,” sobbed Barbara, as she drew the shining folds from the chest that held her most valued household treasures, and Priscilla Alden, with an arm around her friend’s neck, kissed her, and bit her tongue lest it should say in spite of her, “Had he let her marry Wrestling Brewster, she might have needed wedding clothes of another sort from these.”
And now all have looked their last, and the mother’s tears have dropped thick and fast upon those eyes that will weep no more, and the father, silent, stern, and tearless, has laid a hand upon that golden hair that no longer twines around his fingers, and Betty has gently drawn one of the snowdrops from between those resistless fingers, a snowdrop that she will press in her Bible over the words “for of such are the kingdom of heaven,” the cover is laid gently over that fragrant cradle, and the brothers, with the Alden sons who have been Lora’s playmates and dear friends, place it upon the bier and carry it along the field path her light feet have so often trod, past the Brewster homestead, where now only Love and his family remained, and so on to what to-day we call Harden Hill; here around the little church already outgrown, and soon to be superseded, the graves of some of those who thus far had passed away were made; others, indeed, had directed that their remains should rest upon Burying Hill in Plymouth, and some would lie within the radius of light from their own hearthstones; but a few were here, and the captain with his own hands marked out the spot where Lora had fallen on that night when she knew, months before the news came over seas, that Wrestling Brewster was dead. There they laid her, softly, gently, as still we lay down the loved ones whom rudest touch could not harm, or crash of thunders disturb, and her own kinsmen did the rest. A little heap of turfs was piled near, and as the others turned away Alexander and Josiah began to lay them; but Hobomok, the faithful friend and long-time servitor of Standish, laid a finger upon Alick’s arm, saying in his guttural voice,—
“Hobomok do something for the Moonlight-on-the-water. Hobomok put the green cover over her.”
“He’s right, Alick,” said Josiah, with a friendly glance at the old Indian. “He’s all but worshiped Lora ever since she was born. Let him lay the turf.”