“We couldn’t better show our friendship for you, Hobomok.”
“Hob know all about it,” replied the red man sententiously, and the brothers followed the long line of friends who scattered along the road toward their different homes.
Standish walked silently beside his wife until nearly at his own door he stopped, looking frowningly out across the sea, his teeth set hard upon his nether lip, as if fighting out some problem in his own mind; then falling back, he touched William Bradford upon the arm, and drew him a little aside.
“Send home the rest with your sons, Bradford, and stay here to-night.”
“My good friend, many occasions call me to Plymouth”—
“No occasion greater than the choice of life and death; nay, if all they say be true, the choice of salvation or damnation,—nothing weightier than such a choice, is there, Will?”
“What ails you, old friend? Your grief has—has made you ill!”
And the governor, grasping his friend’s arm, looked apprehensively at the deep color that suddenly had overspread the pallor of his face, and at the fierce light that some thought had kindled in the gloomy depths of his eyes, hollow and strained by vigils and unshed tears.
“Tush, man! I’m not gone mad. I’m not such a weakling as to let any grief master the man in me. It’s only that I’m in a strait between God and the Enemy, and there’s no man alive I’d choose for umpire but you.”