So it was decided, and in high feather Giles returned to his home, Damaris on his shoulder, Constance walking soberly at his side, half sharing his triumph in his mission, half frightened lest her brother had but returned from unknown dangers to encounter worse ones.
"Oh, they'll not harm me, timorous Con!" Giles assured her. "They know that it is prudent to let lie the sleeping English bulldogs, of whom, trust me, they know by repute! Now, Sis, can you deck me out in some wise impressive to these savages, who will not see the dignity of our sober dress as we do?"
"Feathers?" suggested Constance, abandoning her anxiety to enter into this phase of the mission. "I think feathers in your hat, Giles, and some sort of a bright sash across your breast, all stuck through with knives? I will get knives from Pris and some of the others. And—oh, I know, Giles! That crimson velvet cloak that was our mother's, hung backward from your shoulder! Splendid, Giles; splendid enough for Sir Walter Raleigh himself to wear at Elizabeth's court, or to spread for her to walk upon."
"It promises well, Sis, in sound, at least," said Giles. "But by all that's wise, help me to carry this paraphernalia ready to don at a safe distance from Plymouth, and by no means betray to our solemn rulers how I shall be decked out!"
The sun was still two hours below his rising when Giles started, the crimson velvet cloak in a bag, his matchlock, or rather Myles Standish's matchlock lent Giles for the expedition, slung across his shoulder, a sword at his side, and the plumes fastened into his hat by Constance's needle and thread, but covered with another hat which surmounted his own.
Constance had arisen, also, and went with Giles a little way upon his journey. Stephen Hopkins had blessed him and bidden him farewell on the preceding night, not to make too much of his setting forth.
At the boundary which they had agreed upon, Constance kissed her brother good-bye, removing his second hat, and dressing the plumes crushed below it.
"Good-bye, my dear one," she said. "And hasten back to me, for I cannot endure delay of your return. And you look splendid, my Knight of the Wilderness, even without the crimson cloak. But see to it that you make it swing back gloriously, and wave it in the dazzled eyes of the Narragansetts!"
