"What maid is this?" asked Woodfield, as he gazed at the vision of beauty; and when Hough had told him the good soldier's heart swelled, and he raised his stiff body that he might take her hand, while she smiled at him through a mist of pity.
"I want you, wounded man," she said. "There are none sick aboard, and I must have one to care for, or my hands will hang idle all the day. I have thrown in my lot with your people, because mine own have driven me forth. You shall call me sister if you will, and you shall be brother to me, because he who is to be my husband is your true comrade, and 'tis friendship that makes brotherhood rather than blood. Rise, brother, and lean on me."
"Girl," said Hough, with his stern smile, "this spell you cast over us is more potent than witchcraft."
"We come," cried Woodfield, drawing himself upright. "Say, comrade, let us flee to Virginia, and settle among our own, that we may hear the blessed English tongue again."
"We go," answered Hough gloomily. "Here is no English colony, but we seek one in the south."
"Go," said Mary Iden, now again Tuschota, daughter of Shuswap, to the three. "Take what you desire for your journey, and go forth. Here are furs, and here strong medicines. Take all. The great God guard you upon the seas and upon the land whither you go to dwell."
So the two Englishmen and the French girl went forth under the winter sky, where a shy moon peeped through laced clouds like a fair maid looking between the curtains of her bed. A dull glow of firelight showed when they looked back into the hollow; and once, when they paused for breath, their ears became filled with the wild sound of singing for the dead.
Morning dawned, and the brigantine was well away, running with a fresh breeze from the colony of France, all hearts aboard as light as the frosty waves which kissed her sides. Through fog and snow she went, like a bird flying to the warmth. Little wonder that the men sang at their tasks; that Upcliff repeated his old stories of the main with a fresh delight, none grudging him a laugh; that Woodfield gathered health at every hour; that Madeleine laughed from morn to night. They were as children released from school, playing on the happy home-going.
So the Dartmouth drew down to Boston quay, after one delay on the unfrequented shore to make repairs, the men clanking at the pumps to keep the leaking barque above the line of danger. The citizens flocked down to meet her, and Hough's approving gaze fell upon Puritan faces among whom he could feel himself indeed at home.
Winthrop himself was called to give the sailors welcome to New England. He stepped aboard, and grasped the master's hand; but not a word could he utter before Madeleine came between them, her beauty all in splendour, her mouth quivering, as she cried: