"Don't look so worried, my dear," said Stephen Hopkins. "It is a boy's instinct to hide his grief, and the dog will be a good comrade for Francis for awhile. Later we will get hold of him. Best leave him to himself awhile. That wild, unruly Jack! And he is dead! I'd rather a hundred pounds were lost than that I had spoken as I did to Francis at first, but how should I have dreamed it was more than another of the Billington scrapes? I tell thee, Connie, it will be a rare mercy if the father does not end badly one day. He is insubordinate, lawless, dangerous. Perhaps young John is saved a worse fate."
"Nevertheless I am sad enough over the fate that has befallen him," said Constance. "He was a kindly boy, and loyal enough to me to make it right that I should mourn him. And I did like him. Poor Jack. Poor, young, heedless Jack! And how proud he was of that clumsy weapon that hath turned on him!"
"And so did I like him, Connie, though he and Francis have been, from our first embarkation on the Mayflower, the torment and black sheep of our company. But I liked the boy. I like his father less, and fear he will one day force us to deal with him extremely." In which prophecy Stephen Hopkins was only too right.
"To think that in one day we should bid a last farewell to two of our young fellow-exiles, Humility and Jack, both gone home, and for ever from us! Giles liked Jack; Jack stood by him when he needed help. Oh, Father, Father, if it were Giles!" cried Constance.
"I know, I know, child," said her father, huskily. "I've been thinking that. I've been thinking that, and more. My son has been headstrong, but never wicked. He is stiffnecked, but hath no evil in his will, except that he resists me. But I have been thinking hard, my Constance. You were right; I would have done well to listen to your pleadings, to your wiser understanding of my boy. I have been hard on him, unjust to him; I should have admitted him to my confidence, given mine to him. I am wrong and humbly I confess it to you, Giles's advocate. When he comes back my boy shall find a better father awaiting him. I wounded him through his very love for me, and well I know how once he loved me."
"Oh, Father; dear, good, great Father!" cried Constance, forgetful of all grief. "Only a great man can thus acknowledge a mistake. My dear, dear, beloved Father!" And in her heart she thought perhaps poor Jack had not died in vain if his death helped to show their father how dear Giles was to him, still, and after all.
[CHAPTER XVI]
A Gallant Lad Withal
There was a gray sky the day after young madcap John Billington was laid to rest in the grave that had been hard to think of as meant for him, dug by the younger colonists. Long rifted clouds lay piled upon one another from the line of one horizon to the other, and the wind blew steadily, keeping close to the ground and whistling around chimneys and rafters in a way that portended a storm driven in from the sea.
"I think it's lost-and-lone to-day, Constance," said Damaris, coining her own term for the melancholy that seemed to envelop earth and sky. "I think it's a good day for a story, and I'd like much to sit in your lap in the chimney corner and hear your nicest ones."