"Be not over startled, dear lady!" exclaimed Howland. "The governor findeth himself a little overborne by the heat, and hath come"—
"John! Dear heart, what is it! Nay, try not to speak! Here, good John Howland, help me to lay him upon the bed—there then, dear one"—
"Fret not thyself, Kate, 't is but a pain in my head—ah—'t is shrewd enough, but it will pass—there, there, good wife, fret not thyself!"
"John Howland, wilt thou find Surgeon Fuller, and mayhap Dame Brewster, but no more. I will wring a napkin out of fair water and lay to his head, for it burneth like fire."
"Ay, it burneth like fire," muttered the sick man wearily moving the poor head from side to side, and Katharine left alone dropped for one moment upon her knees and raised streaming eyes and clasped hands to Heaven, then rose, and when the Doctor and gentle Mary Brewster entered she stood white and calm at her husband's head.
"Ay, ay, he hath sunstroke," muttered the surgeon, laying a hand upon the patient's forehead, "and no wonder, for it is shrewdly hot to-day, and he toiling away like any Hodge of them all. I must let him blood. Canst get me a basin and a bandage, Mistress?"
"I will fetch them, Katharine. Sit you down." And the Elder's wife slipped out of the door and back again before even impatient Doctor Fuller could wonder where she was.
An hour later Carver arousing from the stupor that was growing upon him, asked to see William Bradford, who at once hobbled in from the neighboring house, although himself hardly able to sit up.
"It grieves me to find thee in such evil case, brother," said he painfully seating himself beside the sick man's pillow.
"Thy sorrows will last longer than mine, Will. I must set my house in order so far as I have time. Dost mind, Bradford, what I said to thee and Winslow and Standish, the time I saw ye standing upon the great rock in yon island before we landed in this place?"