Giles kicked at the pebbles in the way, the slow colour mounting in his face. Then he threw back his head and looked the good doctor squarely in the eyes.
"Ah, well, Doctor Fuller," he said. "I'd welcome peace, but what would you? My father condemns me, sees no good in me, nor would he welcome back the old days when we were close friends. There will be a ship come here from home some time on which I can sail back to England. It will be better to rid my father of my hateful presence; yet should I hate to leave Sis—Constance."
"May the ship never leave the runway that shall take you from us, Giles, lad," said the doctor. "You are blind not to see that it is too-great love for thee that ails thy father! It often works to cross purposes, our unreasonable human affection. But the case is by no means past curing when love awry is the disease. Do your part, Giles, and all will be well."
But Giles did not alter his course, and when Captain Myles Standish said to Stephen Hopkins: "We set forth on the eighteenth of September to explore the Massachusetts. I shall take ten men of our colour, and three red men, two besides Squanto. Let me have your lad for one of my band, old friend. I think it will be his remedy." Stephen Hopkins welcomed the suggestion, as Giles himself did, and it was settled. The Plymouth company sailed away in their shallop on a beautiful, sunshiny morning when the sun had scarcely come up out of the sea.
Giles and his father had shaken hands on parting, and Stephen Hopkins had given the boy his blessing; both were conscious that it might be a final parting, since no one could be sure what would befall the small band among untried savages.
Yet there was no further reconciliation than this, no apology on the one side, nor proffered pardon on the other.
Constance clung long around her brother's neck in the dusk in which she had risen to prepare his breakfast; she did not go down to see the start, being heavy hearted at Giles's going, and going without lifting the cloud completely between him and his father. She bade him good-bye in the long low room under the rear of the lean-to, where wood was piled and water buckets were set and storage made of supplies.
"Oh, Giles, Giles, my dearest, may God keep you and bring you back!" Constance whispered, and then let her brother go.
She went about her household tasks that morning with lagging step and unsmiling lips. Damaris followed her, wistfully, much depressed by the unusual dejection of Constance, who, in spite of her stepmother's disapproval of anything like merriment, ordinarily contrived to entertain Damaris to the top of her bent when the household tasks were getting done.
"Will Giles never come home again, Connie?" the child asked at last, and Constance cried with a catch in her voice: