The Fortune's sails creaked and her gear rattled as her men hauled up her canvas for her homeward voyage.
She weighed anchor and slowly moved on her first tack, bright in the golden sunshine of a perfect Indian summer morning.
"Be brave, and wave a gay farewell to the little lass," said Stephen Hopkins. "And may God fend her from harm on her way, and lead her over still waters all her days."
"Oh, amen, amen, Father!" sobbed Constance. "She can't see we are crying while we wave to her so blithely. But it is the harder part to stay behind."
"With me, my lass?" asked Stephen Hopkins, smiling tenderly down on his usually courageous little pioneer.
"Oh, no; no indeed! Forgive me, Father! The one hard thing would be to stay anywhere without thee," cried Constance, smiling as brightly as she had just wept bitterly. The Fortune leaned over slightly, and sailed at a good speed down the harbour, Humility's white signal of farewell hanging out over the boat's stern, discernable long after the girl's plump little figure and pink round face, all washed white with tears, had been blotted out by intervening space.
Before the Fortune had gone wholly out of sight Francis Billington came over the marsh grass that edged the sand, sometimes running for a few steps, sometimes lagging; his whole figure and air eloquent of catastrophe.
"What can ail Francis Billington?" exclaimed Stephen Hopkins.
"He looks ghastly," cried Constance. "Father, it can't be—Giles?" she whispered.
"Bad news of him!" cried her father quickly, turning pale. "Nonsense, no; of course not."