BETTY ALDEN

THE FIRST-BORN DAUGHTER OF
THE PILGRIMS

BY

JANE G. AUSTIN

AUTHOR OF “STANDISH OF STANDISH,” “A NAMELESS NOBLEMAN,” “DR.
LE BARON AND HIS DAUGHTERS,” “THE DESMOND HUNDRED,”
“NANTUCKET SCRAPS,” ETC.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1891

Copyright, 1891,
By JANE G. AUSTIN

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

TO
MY DEAR COUSINS
MARSTON AND MARY WATSON
AND THEIR
HILLSIDE
WHERE BETTY ALDEN HAS BEEN SO PLEASANTLY CRADLED
DURING THE PAST YEAR
This Story of her Life and Times
IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
Plymouth
Michaelmas, 1891

PREFACE.

Everybody has sympathized with Mr. Dick who could not keep King Charles’s head out of his memorial, and I hope everybody will sympathize with me who have been unable to keep Betty Alden in this her memorial so constantly as I wished and she deserved. But as the whole includes the less, her story will be found threaded through that of her people and her times in that modest subordination to which the lives of her sex were trained in that day. He who would read for himself the story of this noble woman, the first-born daughter of the Pilgrims, must seek it through ancient volumes and mouldering records, until at Little Compton in Rhode Island he finds upon her gravestone the last affectionate and honorable mention of Elizabeth, daughter of John and Priscilla Alden, and wife of William Pabodie. Or in lighter mood, he may consider the rugged rhyme tradition places in her mouth upon the occasion of the birth of her great great grandchild:—

“Rise daughter! To thy daughter run!

Thy daughter’s daughter hath a son.”

One word upon a subject which has of late been a good deal discussed, but by no means settled, and that is, the burial place of Myles Standish. In the absence of all proof in any such matter, tradition becomes important, and so far as I have been able to determine, the tradition that some of the earliest settlers were buried in the vicinity of a temporary meeting-house upon Harden Hill in Duxbury is more reliable than the tradition that Standish was laid in an old burying ground at Hall’s Corner which probably was not set aside as a burial place in 1656, the date of his death.

It is matter of surprise and regret to most persons that the Pilgrims took so little pains to perpetuate the memory of their graves, and their doing so would have been a wonderful aid to those who would read the palimpsest of the past. But a little recollection diminishes the wonder, if not the regret. Practically, the Pilgrims had neither the money wherewith to import gravestones, nor the skill to fashion and sculpture them; ethically, their lives were fashioned after an ideal, and that ideal was Protestantism in its most primitive intention, a protest against Rome, her creeds and her usages; prayers for the dead were to them a horrible superstition; Purgatory a mere invention of the powers of hell; an appeal to saints, angels, or the spirits of the departed was a direct insult to the Divine Supremacy. The instant the soul left the body Protestantism decreed that it was not only useless but profane to follow it with prayers (much less masses), or with any other remembrance which might be construed as intruding upon “the counsels of the Almighty,” so that while private grief was sternly rebuked as rebellion against the chastisements of a just and offended God, every form of funeral service, domestic or congregational, was set aside as superstitious and dangerous.

The only exceptions to this rule were the volleys of musketry fired over the graves of certain of the leaders, as Carver, Standish, Bradford, and a few others, but these stern military honors were unaccompanied by even the prayer of a chaplain.

It was perhaps not altogether from fear of the Indians that the fifty of the Mayflower Pilgrims who were left alive that first spring smoothed the graves of the fifty who were gone, and planted them to corn; possibly they also feared their own hearts, sorely tempted by nature to cherish and adorn those barren graves where so much love and hope lay buried; and any step in that direction was a step backward from that “city” they had crossed the seas to seek in the wilderness.

It is I think certain that not one of the original Pilgrim graves was marked by any sort of monument. The few we now delight to honor were identified by those of their children to whom the third generation erected tablets. A few persons, of loving and unbigoted hearts, begged to be buried beside their departed friends, and Standish in his last will allowed a sunset gleam of his tender nature to shine out when he asked to be laid as near as conveniently might be to his two dear daughters; but neither he nor any of the others who made this testamentary petition mentioned where the graves were, beside which they fain would lie, nor in any one instance have they been positively identified. That of Elder Brewster, concerning whose burial we have many particulars, is altogether unknown, except that it seems to have been made upon Burying Hill. Perhaps that of Standish is there also, for when he says,—“If I die at Duxburrow I should like,” etc., he may mean that if he dies in Duxbury he would fain be carried to Plymouth, there to lie beside his daughters and very likely his two little sons as well.

But to me it seems a small matter, this question of the grave of Standish. He lived to be old and very infirm, and neither his old age, his infirmities, nor his final surrender to death are any part of his memory. For me, he stands forever as he stood in his glorious prime among the people he so unselfishly championed, a tower of strength, courage, and endurance, the shining survival of chivalry, the gallant paladin whose coat-armor gleams amid the throng of russet jerkins and mantles of hodden gray, like the dash of color with which Turner accents his wastes of sombre water and sky. So let him stand, so let us look upon him, and honor him and glory in him, nor seek to draw the veil with which Time mercifully hides the only defeat our hero ever knew, that last fatal battle when age, and “dolorous pain,” and fell disease, conquered the invincible, and restored to earth all that was mortal of a magnificent immortality. We cannot erect a monument over that forgotten grave, but in some coming day let us hope that the descendants of the soldier Pilgrim will possess themselves of the little peninsula where the site of his home may still be traced, and there place some memorial stone to tell that on this fairest spot of fair Duxbury’s shore lived and died the man who gave Duxbury her name, and bequeathed to us an inheritance far richer than that which was “surreptitiously detained” from him.

Boston, October, 1891.

CONTENTS.

BETTY ALDEN.

CHAPTER I.

A WHISPER IN THE EAR.

“Tell him yourself, Pris.”

“No, no, Bab, I know too much for that! These men love not to be taught by a woman, although, if all were known, full many a whisper in the bedchamber comes out next day at the council board, and one grave master says to another, ‘Now look you, tell it not to the women lest they blab it!’ never mistrusting in his owl-head that a woman set the whole matter afloat.”

“Oh, Pris, you do love to jibe at the men. How did you ever persuade yourself to marry one of them?”

“Why, so that one of them might be guided into some sort of discretion. Doesn’t John Alden show as a bright example to his fellows?”

“And all through his wife’s training, eh, Pris?”

“Why, surely. Didst doubt such a patent fact, Mistress Standish?”

“But now, Pris, in sober sadness tell me what has given you such dark suspicions of these new-comers, and how do you venture to whisper ‘treason’ and ‘traitor’ about a man who has been anointed God’s messenger, even though it has been in the papistical Church of England?”

“If the English bishops are such servants of antichrist as the governor and the Elder make them out, I should conceive that their anointing would be rather against a man’s character than a warrant for it.” And Priscilla Alden laughed saucily into the thoughtful face of her friend and neighbor, Barbara Standish, who, knitting busily at a little lamb’s-wool stocking, shook her head as she replied,—

“Mr. Lyford is not a man to my taste, and I care not to hear him preach, but yet, we are told in Holy Writ not to speak evil of dignitaries, nor to rail against those set over us”—

“Then surely it is contrary to Holy Writ for this Master Lyford to speak evil of the governor and to rail against the captain, as he doth continually”—

“Who rails against the captain, Mistress Alden?” demanded a cheerful voice, as Myles Standish entered at the open door of his house, and, removing the broad-leafed hat picturesquely pulled over his brow, revealed temples worn bare of the rust-colored locks still clustering thickly upon the rest of his head, and matching in color the close, pointed beard and the heavy brows, beneath which the resolute and piercing eyes his enemies learned to dread in early days now shone with a genial smile.

“Who has been abusing the captain?” repeated he, as the women laughed in some confusion, looking at each other for an answer. Priscilla was the first to find it, and glancing frankly into the face of the man she might once have loved replied,—

“Why, ’tis I that am trying to stir Barbara into showing you what a nest of adders we are nourishing here in Plymouth, and moving you and the governor to set your heels upon them before it be too late.”

As she spoke, the merry gleam died out of the captain’s eyes, and grasping his beard in the left hand, as was his wont in perplexity, he said gravely,—

“These are large matters for a woman’s handling, Priscilla, and it may chance that Barbara’s silence is the better part of your valor. But still,—what do you mean?”

“I mean that Master Oldhame and Master Lyford as the head, and their followers and creatures as the tail, are maturing into a very pretty monster here in our midst, which if let alone will some fine morning swallow the colony for its breakfast, and if only it would be content with the men I would say grace for it, but, unfortunately, the women and children are the tender bits, and will serve as a relish to the coarser meat.”

“Come, now, Priscilla, a truce to your quips and jibes, and tell me what there is to tell. I cry you pardon for noting your forwardness in what concerned you not”—

“Nay, Myles, you’ve said it now,” interposed Barbara, with a little laugh, while Priscilla, gathering her work in her apron, and looking very pretty with her flaming cheeks and sparkling eyes, jumped up saying,—

“At all events, John Alden’s dinner concerns both him and me, and I will go and make it ready; a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse, and a penny pipe as well as a trumpet to warn a deaf man that the enemy is upon him. Put your nose in the air, Captain Standish, and march stoutly on into the pitfall dug for your feet.”

“Come, come, Mistress Alden! These are no words for a gentlewoman,” began the captain angrily, but on the threshold Priscilla turned, a saucy laugh flashing through the anger of her face, and reminding the captain in his own despite of a sudden sunbeam glinting across dark Manomet in the midst of a thunder-storm.

“Here’s the governor coming up the hill, Myles,” whispered she, “and you may finish the rest of your scolding to him. I’m frighted as much as is safe for me a’ready.”

And light as a bird she ran down the hill just as Bradford reached the door and, glancing in, said in his sonorous and benevolent voice, “Good-morrow to you, Mistress Standish. I am sorry to have frighted away your merry gossip, but I am seeking the goodman— Ah, there you are, Captain! I would have a word with you at your leisure.”

“Shall I run after Priscilla, Myles?” asked Barbara, cordially returning the governor’s greeting.

“Nay, wife, we two will walk up to the Fort,” replied Standish, and replacing his hat, he led the way up the hill to the Fort, where he ushered his friend into a little room contrived in the southeastern angle for his private use: his office, his study, his den, or his growlery by turns, for here was his little stock of books, his writing-table and official records; here his pipes and tobacco; a stand of private arms crowned by Gideon; the colony’s telescope fashioned by Galileo; and here a deep leathern chair with a bench nigh at hand, where through many a silent hour the captain sat, and amid the smoke-wreaths of his pipe mused upon things that had been, things that might have been, and things that never could be, never could have been.

“Have a stool by the porthole, Will; ’tis something warm for September,” said he, as he closed the door.

“Ay, but you always have a good air at this east window, and a fair view as well,” returned the governor, seating himself.

“The view of the Charity is but a fleeting one, since she sails in the morning,” remarked Standish dryly.

“Yes, she does,” assented Bradford, with an air of embarrassment not lost upon the captain, who smiled ever so little, and lighted his pipe, saying between the puffs,—

“’Tis safe enough to smoke in this den of mine, Will, and your tobacco is a wonderful counselor.”

“Say you so, Myles? Then pass over your pouch, for I am in sore need of counsel and sought it of you.”

“Such as I have is at your command, Governor. What is the matter?”

“Well, ’tis hard to put it in any dignified or magisterial phrase, Myles, since, truth to tell, it comes of the distaff side of the house”—

“Ay, ay, I can believe it! Has Priscilla Alden been whispering with your wife?”

“Nay, not that I know of; in truth, ’tis somewhat idler than even that foundation, for Mistress Alden is one of our own, but this—well, to tell the story in manful sincerity, my wife informs me that Dame Lyford, who is as you know in childbed, and much beholden for care and comfort to both your wife and mine, as well as to Priscilla Alden, last night fell a-crying, and said she was a miserable wretch to receive nourishment and tendance at their hands when her husband was practicing with Oldhame and others for our destruction. In the beginning, Alice set this all down as the querulous maundering of a sick woman; but when the other persisted, and spoke of treasonable letters that her husband had writ, and read out to Oldhame in her very presence, Dame Bradford began to pay some heed, and ask questions, until by the time the woman’s strength was overborne and she could say no more, the skeleton of a plot lay bare, which should it be clothed upon with sinew, and flesh, and armor, and weapons, might slay us all both as a colony and as particular men.”

“A dragon, Priscilla called it,” interposed the captain.

“Priscilla! Did Mistress Lyford say as much to her as to my wife?” asked the governor, a little piqued.

“Nay, I know not, for I was, according to my wont, too outspoken to listen as I should.”

“Well, but explain, I beg of you.”

“All is, that Priscilla began some sort of warning anent this very matter, and I angered her with some jibe at women meddling in matters too mighty for them, so that I know not what she might have had to tell.”

The Governor of Plymouth smiled in a subtle fashion peculiar to men whose vision extends beyond their own time. “Women,” said he slowly, as he pressed the tobacco into his pipe,—“women, Myles, are like the bit of lighted tinder I will lay upon this inert mass of dried weed. The tinder is so trivial, so slight a thing, so difficult to handle, so easily destroyed,—and yet, brother man, how without it should we derive the solace and counsel of our pipes?”

Glancing at each other, the soldier and the statesman laughed somewhat shamefacedly, and Myles said,—

“Ay, ’tis the pith of Æsop’s fable of the Lion and the Mouse.”

“Well, yes, although that is a thought too arrogant, perhaps; and yet Master Lion is ofttimes a stupid fellow, though he is styled king of beasts.”

“And what is the net just now, my Lord Lion?” demanded Standish, who could not quite relish Bradford’s philosophy. The governor roused himself at the question, and laying aside his meditative mood replied,—

“We both know, Captain, that all who are with us are not of us, and we have not forgot what false reports those disaffected fellows carried home in the Anne, nor the mutterings and plottings we have heard and suspected since.”

“Shorten John Oldhame by the head and you will kill the whole mutiny.”

“That sounds very simple, but is hardly a feasible course, Captain, especially as we have no proof in the matter, and it is upon this very question of proof that I came to consult you.”

“And I just shut off the only source of proof I am like to get.”

“Nay, it is not likely that Mistress Alden knows more than my wife has already repeated to me of what Dame Lyford can reveal, but our good friend Master Pierce came to my house to-day about some matters I am sending to my wife’s sister, Mary Carpenter, and all by chance mentioned that he had in trust a parcel of letters writ by Lyford, with one or two by Oldhame, and that both men had charged him to secrecy in the business. Now, Standish, those letters contain the moral of the whole matter.”

“To be sure; it is like drawing a double tooth to see them sail out of the harbor.”

“Captain, it is my duty as the chief officer of this colony to learn the contents of these missives.”

“Yes, but how? The traitors will not betray themselves.”

“I must privately open and read their letters,—it is my duty.”

“No, no, Will; no, no! I can’t give in to that; I can’t help you there, man! To open and read another man’s letter, and on the sly, is all one with hearkening at a keyhole, or telling a lie, or turning your back on an enemy without a blow. You can’t do that, Will, let the cause be what it may.”

And as the captain’s astonished gaze fixed itself upon his friend’s face, Bradford colored deeply, yet made reply in a voice both resolute and self-respecting,—

“I feel as you do, Standish, and as any honorable man must; but this is a matter involving more than mine own honor or pleasure. If these men are persuading our associates in England to withdraw from their agreement, and refuse to send us further supplies, or to find a market for our commodities, and so help out our own struggles for subsistence, we and all these weaklings dependent upon us are lost. You know yourself how hardly we came through the famine of last year, and although by the mercy of God we now may hope to provide our own food, what can we do for clothes, for tools, for even the means of communication with our old home, if the Adventurers throw us over, or if they demand immediate repayment of the moneys advanced? In every way, and for all sakes, it is imperative that we prevent an evil and false report going home to those upon whose help we still must rely for the planting of our colony.”

“To be sure it is the usage of war to intercept the enemy’s dispatches,” mused Standish, tugging at his russet beard and scowling heavily.

“To be sure it is,” returned Bradford eagerly. “And although these men are not avowed enemies, we can see that they are not friends. Do but mark how thick they are with Billington, and Hicks, and all the other malcontents. Oldhame’s house is a regular Cave of Adullam.”

“Well, Will, tell me what I am to do or to say in the matter. You know that I am ready for any duty, however odious.”

“I fain would have you go aboard the Charity with me to inspect her carriages.”

“Is there any chance of a fight?”

“No, no. I shall not go aboard until the last moment, when all but Winslow have left.”

“Winslow’s errand home is to see the Adventurers?”

“As the colony’s agent, yes.”

“And he knows your intent?”

“Not yet. I have spoken of it to no man until I had your mind upon it, Standish. To-night I shall summon the Assistants to my house, and lay the matter before them, but I felt moved to speak of it first to you in private.”

“Lest I should blaze out before them all, where you could not argue the matter coolly with me, eh?”

Bradford smiled as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose to go.

“I could not do with your disapproval, old friend,” said he.

CHAPTER II

A SHARP PAIR OF SCISSORS.

Two men stood upon Cole’s Hill, half sheltering themselves behind the ragged growth of scrub oaks and poplars sprung from those graves of the first winter, sown by the survivors to wheat lest the savages should perceive that half the company were dead. That pathetic crop of grain had perished on the ground and never been renewed; but Nature, tender mother, soon replaced it with a robe of her own symbolism, green as her favorite clothing ever is, and embroidered with the starry flowers of the succory, blue as heaven.

From the grave of John Carver and Katharine his wife had sprung a graceful clump of birches, and it was behind these that the two men finally took up their post of observation. One of them was John Lyford, a smooth and white faced man, whose semi-clerical garb only accented his cunning eyes and sensual mouth. A double renegade this, for, flying to the New World to escape the punishment of his sins in England, he proffered himself to the Pilgrims as a convert to their creed, renouncing with oaths and tears his Episcopal ordination, although assured by those liberal-minded men that such recantation was not required or desired; then, having joined the Church of the Separation entirely of his own free will, he turned viperwise upon the hand that fed him, and began plotting against the peace, nay the very life, of his generous hosts, and leading away those weak and disaffected souls to be found in every community.

John Oldhame, his companion, was a very different sort of person. Big, loud-voiced, and dogmatic, he was the sailor who would see the ship driven to destruction on the rocks unless he could be captain and give orders to every one else.

The motives of these two conspirators were as diverse as their antecedents, although both came out under the auspices of the London Adventurers, of whom a word must be said. These gentlemen, knowing a good deal less of New England than we do of the sources of the Nile, had adventured certain moneys in fitting out the Pilgrims, and in sustaining them until they should be able to repay the sums thus advanced “with interest thereto.” When the Mayflower made her first return, leaving fifty of the Pilgrims in their graves and the other fifty just struggling back to life and feebly beginning their plantation and house building, the Adventurers were exceedingly wroth that she did not come freighted with lumber, furs, and especially salted fish enough to nearly pay for her voyage. Their bitter reproaches written to Carver were answered with manly dignity by Bradford, but a really cordial feeling was never reëstablished, and when the Pilgrims requested that either Robinson or some other minister should be sent out to them, the Adventurers imposed Lyford upon them, some of them giving him secret instructions to act as a spy in their behalf.

John Oldhame, a man of means and position, came out upon a different footing, paying his own expenses, and being, as the Pilgrims phrased it, “on his own particular” instead of “on the general” or joint stock account. But events soon made it plain that a very good understanding existed between Oldhame and the Adventurers, and that if he should be enabled to detect his hosts in defrauding the Adventurers, whose greedy maws never were fully satisfied, they would transfer their protection and countenance to him, sustaining him as a rival or even supplanter of the interests of the men they had undertaken to befriend.

The Pilgrims had the faults of their virtues in very marked degree, and carried patience, meekness, long-suffering, and credulity to a point most irritating to their historians and very subversive of their worldly interests. Doubtless, however, they found their account in the final reckoning, and one must try to be patient with their goodness. All which means that if this growing treason in their midst was at all suspected it was not noticed, and both Oldhame and Lyford were admitted to the full privileges of townsmen, including a seat at the Council and full knowledge of the colony’s concerns. Lyford, in virtue of the ordination, so scornfully abjured by himself, was requested to act as minister in association with Elder Brewster, although some quiet doubts still prevented his admission to the position of pastor.

With this necessary explanation of the position of affairs we return to the hiding-place behind the birches, whence the conspirators watched a boat manned by four sailors which lay uneasily tossing on the flood tide, rubbing its nose against the Rock, while, in the offing, a ship ready for sea lay awaiting it.

“Bradford is certainly going aboard the Charity. They’re waiting for him, and there he comes down The Street,” growled Oldhame at length.

“Perhaps only to see Winslow off. He, he! the Adventurers will show Master Envoy Winslow but a sour face when they’ve read our letters,” sniggered Lyford.

“I wish he might be clapt up in jail for the rest of his life, confound him!”

“There’s Standish along of Bradford! Think he’s going aboard, too?” And Lyford’s face showed such craven terror that Oldhame laughed aloud.

“Afraid of Captain Shrimp, as Tom Morton calls him?” demanded he. “I’ve put a spoke in his wheel, at any rate. You writ down what I advised about another commander, didn’t you?”

“Ay. To send him over at all odds, and to arrest this fellow for high treason.”

“Ah! He’s not going aboard after all,” ejaculated Oldhame venomously. “Feels he must stay ashore and watch you and me and Hicks and Billington and some of the rest. Set him up for a sneaking, prying little watch-dog! But let him undertake to order me about as he did t’other day, and I’ll cram his square teeth down his bull’s throat for him, damn him!”

“He, he, he! There’s no love lost between you and Captain Standish, is there, Master Oldhame? There, they’re off,—Winslow and Bradford only; and Captain Shrimp returns up the hill with the rest. I sore mistrust me the governor has got scent of those letters, Oldhame.”

“Pho, pho, man! Don’t be so timorous. Pierce won’t give up the letters, and if he did, Bradford would think twice before opening them. Let him dare put a finger to one of mine, and I’ll bring the whole house about his ears! I’d like to catch him at it. I’d—why, I’d give him a taste of my fists,—one for himself, and one to pass on to his neighbor, and after that”—

“M-o-o-o!” broke in a voice close behind, and, with a start, the conspirators faced round to meet “the great red cow,” recently arrived in the Charity, and, with her, the comely but scoffing face of Priscilla Alden.

“I cry your pardon, gentlemen, if I have disturbed a secret conclave, but as my babes have a share of this cow’s milk, I like her not to feed among the graves. All sorts of unclean creatures lurk here, and I fear lest the poor beast find contamination.”

“A saucy wench, and one that would well grace the ducking-stool,” growled Oldhame as Priscilla drove her cow away; while Lyford, remembering that she had that morning brought his wife a delicate breakfast, laughed uneasily and made no reply.

The governor’s boat meanwhile, merrily driven by the “white-ash breeze” of four stalwart oars, had reached the ship’s side, signaling, as she passed, the colony’s pinnace, which, under easy sail, lay off and on the anchorage of the Charity.

“Good-morrow, Governor. You are welcome aboard, Master Winslow,” cried the hearty voice of William Pierce, master of the Charity, and friend of the Pilgrims, as the passengers came aboard; and then, as if their errand were one needing no explanation, he led the way at once to his own cabin, fastened the door, and from a small locker at the foot of the bed-place took a packet of letters enveloped in oilskin. Laying these upon the little table and still resting his hand upon them, the honest mariner looked steadily in the faces of his visitors.

“Master Bradford, you are the governor of this colony and its chief authority. Do you, in the presence of Master Edward Winslow, your agent to the home government and one of your principal assistants, demand the surrender of these letters confided to my care by persons under your government?”

“I do, Master Pierce,” replied Bradford distinctly, “and I call Edward Winslow to witness that the responsibility is mine and that of my Board of Assistants, and that you are guiltless in the matter. Nevertheless, I will not pretend that Master Oldhame and his party are directly under my government, since they came to Plymouth on their own account, and are not ranked as of the general company, but rather on their own particular.”

“Still they are bound by the laws we all have subscribed to for our mutual safety and advantage,” suggested Winslow, and would have said more had not Pierce bluffly interposed,—

“Well, well, all these niceties are out of my line. Some colonists have confided certain letters to me; the governor of the colony makes requisition upon me before a competent witness for these letters, suspecting treason therein; I surrender them to his keeping, and there ends my responsibility. And now I will go and make sail upon my ship. Governor, your pinnace shall be summoned whenever you give the signal.” And Captain Pierce turned toward the companion-way, but presently returned, a genial smile replacing the slight annoyance darkening his face, and going to the “ditty bag” suspended near the porthole, he fumbled for a moment, then threw what he had found upon the table, adding merrily, “And if you want to make a neat job of it, Bradford, here’s a sharp little pair of scissors. We sailors hate to see a trick of work bungled, if it’s nothing better than ferreting out treason.”

And with a smart westerly breeze the Charity set her nose toward England, and plunged bravely out into the Atlantic. Before she sighted the scene of the Pilgrim Mothers’ first washing-day, however, she lay to, while the governor’s pinnace was brought alongside, and he and Winslow came on deck and stood for a moment hand in hand.

“God be with you, brother,” said Bradford in a voice of restrained emotion. “Remember that until you return we are as a man half whose limbs are palsied; nay, Carver in that prophetic moment called you our brain. Remember it, Winslow.”

CHAPTER III.

TREASON.

“Master Oldhame, you are set upon the watch to-night, and will report after the evening gun at the Fort.”

“The devil you say, Giles Hopkins! And who gave you leave to order your betters about?”

“Captain Standish names the watch, and I as ancient-bearer am under his orders and carry his messages.”

“You may be under Satan’s orders or under a monkey’s orders for aught I care, Giles, my boy, but if you dare come nigh me with any more of Captain Shrimp’s orders I’ll wring your neck for you, master bantam cockerel, mark you that.”

“I will report to the captain,” calmly replied Hopkins, who, despite his father’s restless example, was fast becoming one of the colony’s most valued young citizens.

A profane exclamation was Oldhame’s only reply, but as the ensign strode away he turned his head and called into the house at whose door he sat,—

“Lyford! Lyford! Here’s some merry-making afoot! Captain Shrimp has summoned me to stand on watch to-night, and I have sent him and his errand-boy to the devil. Aha! here he comes himself with fury stiffening every hair of his red beard and snapping out of his eyes. Stand behind the door and hearken”—

“Good-even, Master Oldhame,” struck in the firm and repressed tones of a voice at sound of which Lyford cringed closer in his corner, and Oldhame blustered uneasily,—

“Good-even, Myles Standish.”

“It is your turn in regular rotation, Master Oldhame, to stand sentry-watch to-night as you have done before, and as every man in the colony is called upon to do. Will you kindly report at the Fort after gun-fire this evening?”

“No, I won’t, Captain Shrimp.”

“You refuse to obey the law of the colony?”

“I refuse to be said by you, you beggarly little rascal.”

“Then I shall arrest you as a traitor, and if I had my will, I’d have you out and shoot you at sunrise.”

“Oh, you would, would you, you wretched baseborn—

“Have a care, man, have a care. Stop while you may!” And the captain’s voice deepened to a growl, and his eyes, wide open, yet contracted in the pupil to a point of fire, fixed themselves like weapons upon those of the mutineer, who, maddened by their menace, sprung to his feet knife in hand, and aimed a blow at the captain’s face that might have forever quenched the light of those magnetic eyes, had it not been caught on the hilt of Gideon, the good sword that in these days hung ever at his master’s side, although he seldom needed to quit his scabbard.

“Villain, you’ve broken my wrist!” yelled Oldhame, dropping his knife, upon which Standish planted his foot.

“To me! To me, men! Help! Murder! To me, Oldhames!” again shouted the traitor, but although a score or so of the townsmen gathered at the cry, not one made any demonstration or reply, while Standish, setting his lips and drawing two or three heavy breaths, hardly cast a glance at the crowd, but laying a hand upon Gideon’s hilt coldly demanded,—

“John Oldhame, do you refuse to stand your watch to-night?”

A volley of abuse from Oldhame was interrupted by a messenger from Bradford, who, saluting the captain, reported,—

“The governor sends to know the cause of the tumult, and desires Captain Standish to arrest any disorderly persons refusing to submit to authority.”

“My respects to the governor, and I am about to do so,” replied Standish in the hard and cold tone which at once repressed and betrayed his passion.

“John Oldhame, I arrest you in the name of the law! Alden, Howland, Browne, I summon you to my aid! Convey this man to the Fort and lock him in the strong-room. Do him no bodily harm unless he resist, but secure him without delay.”

Then ensued such a scene as Plymouth had as yet never seen, for with one or two exceptions the men who shared the struggles and perils of the colony’s first days had become too closely welded together, and were too self-respecting, to rebel against the authority they had themselves elected.

But no sooner were the goodly foundations of the new home laid and cemented in the blood of those who dared all for Freedom’s sake, than the anarchist arrived to throw down what was already wrought, and erect his own den upon the ruins.

Oldhame, maddened both at his defeat and the failure of those who had listened to his treason to make an open revolt in his favor, lost all control both of words and actions, and so ramped and raved, so cursed and vituperated, so kicked and smote and struggled, that it was not without a most unseemly contest that he was finally secured and dragged up the Burying Hill to the Fort, where in the corner opposite to the captain’s den was a strong-room, small, but as yet quite sufficient for the colony’s need of a prison.

A few hours of silence and solitude wrought a change, however, and John Alden, who held the position of prison-warden, came down the hill toward sunset with a request from the prisoner that he might see Master Lyford.

“The wolf would fain take counsel with the fox,” remarked Priscilla when her husband told her his errand. “And our over-amiable sheep-dogs will never say nay to such a modest request.”

“Pity but they made thee governor, Pris,” suggested John with a bovine smile intended to be sarcastical.

“Ay,” coolly replied his wife. “’Twould save some trouble. ’Tis a roundabout way we women have to manage now.”

“Eh? what do all those fine words mean when they’re put straight, wife?”

“They mean that you’d better do your errand to the governor before sunset, and then come home to eat my bannocks while they’re fresh.”

“You’re right, Pris, and I’m gone.”

But the bannocks were not to be eaten for another hour or so, during which time Master Lyford was closeted with his associate in the strong-room, and Alden kept ward without.

That evening the ex-minister sought the governor’s presence, and with many protestations of regret at the late unfortunate misunderstanding, as he phrased it, offered Oldhame’s submission and willingness to comply with the military requirements of the government, adding craftily,—

“If our worthy governor were also our captain there could never be any of these troubles.”

“That would be to burn down the house because the chimney smokes now and again,” replied Bradford good-humoredly. “It is largely due to Captain Standish’s courage and skill, not to mention his loyalty, his steadfastness, and his wisdom, that this colony is other than a handful of ashes and a field of graves. When you new-comers have learned to know him, you will value our captain as we do.”

The next morning Master Oldhame was released, and the next night stood his watch, nor, jealously as he watched and listened for them, was there a look or a tone from the captain or any of his adherents to remind the conquered rebel of his discomfiture, or the triumph of authority.

The next Sunday, or as it was universally called, the Lord’s Day, the plot laid in the strong-room of the Fort developed most unexpectedly.

When at ten o’clock Bartholomew Allerton, now promoted to the post of band-master to the colony’s army, beat the “assembly” in the Town Square as a summons to the church-goers to meet and form in their usual procession up the hill, he was confronted by Peter Oldhame, a lad somewhat younger than himself, who swung a cow bell almost in the drummer’s face, shouting,—

“To church! To church! Englishmen hearken to the English Church! To church! To church!”

Bradford, who was just coming out of his house with Alice and Christian Penn, her buxom handmaiden, following meekly behind, stopped and looked sternly at the intruder until he, turning his back, walked down Leyden Street toward the old Common House, disused now except for storage.

“Shall I arrest the varlet, and clap him up in the strong-room?” asked Bart Allerton eagerly, as he swung the drum-gear off his shoulder.

“Nay, my son; it is the Lord’s Day and we will not farther disturb its peace. This rebel has ceased his summons and you may do so also, lest worse come of it.”

“Does your honor see Master Lyford in gown and bands coming out of Master Oldhame’s house?”

“Nay, Bart, I see him not, for I look not at him. Now no more, good youth, but fall into rank with your fellows.”

And fifty men or more, each armed and ready for battle either with men or the Ghostly Enemy who inspirits men, moved in solemn procession of threes up Burying Hill to the Fort, the rear closed by the governor in his robe of office, with the Elder in his gown at his right hand, and the captain in full uniform at his left.

Not a word was exchanged between the leaders upon the events of the morning, but it was no news to any of them, when the long service was over and in the seclusion of home the women’s tongues were let loose, to hear that Lyford, in spite of his abject repudiation of his Episcopal ordination, and membership with the Separatist Church, had gathered a congregation, read the English Service, preached a vituperative sermon against the leaders of the colony, and administered the Communion.

Such open bravado and schism as this could not be allowed to continue, for although the Pilgrims never persecuted any man for honest difference of religious belief, and were on very cordial terms with many members of the English Church, whom their pastor Robinson received to Communion and fellowship, it was hardly to be expected that they would permit a double apostate like Lyford to gather a body of malcontents in their midst, and hold services avowedly antagonistic to the church of the Pilgrims.

Nobody, therefore, was surprised when, on the Monday following this Sunday, the governor’s message went forth summoning all the men of the colony, whether church-members, citizens, or only temporary residents, to assemble at the Fort at nine of the clock on Tuesday morning in a Court of the People, the colony not yet having outgrown this, the ideal mode of popular government.

CHAPTER IV.

THOU ART THE MAN!

Again Bartholomew Allerton, with much pride in the performance, beat out the “assembly” in the Town Square, and at the sound some fourscore men gathered from the houses, the shore, or those impaled garden plots surrounding each house, where already patient toil had produced in the wilderness very sweet reminiscences of English cottage-gardens.

The weather was wild, and ominous with the promise of one of those fierce storms of wind and rain, pretty sure to visit the coast in March and September, and still called by Plymouth folk the line storm, or the equinoctial, in calm contempt of modern meteorological theories. They also call a thunder-shower, however slight, a “tempest,” and who is to object? Not I.

“Master Lyford’s friends are gathering in force,” remarked Standish, as he stood at the door of his house just below the Fort on Burying Hill.

“His friends!” repeated Alden, who, living in the house between that of the governor and the captain, was often to be found in company of the latter. “I did not think he had friends enough in Plymouth to be called a force.”

“Not in Plymouth, nor yet in heaven, but somewhere between the two. The armies of the Prince of the Power of the Air.”

And Standish, smiling grimly, pointed to the troops of clouds scurrying up over Manomet, and Watson’s Hill, and all along the eastern and southern horizon; serried ranks, and scattered outposts, and flying vedettes, which, now by a flank movement, and now by an onward rush, seemed taking possession of all the blue battlefield above, blotting out the azure, and audaciously attacking the great sun himself.

“’Tis the equinoctial,” stammered John Alden, perplexed.

“The wind, the great wind Euroclydon,” replied Standish, who loved the sonorous and martial sound of old Bible English, and read it alternately with his Cæsar.

“Are you ready, Captain? You remember our arrangements?” asked Bradford, his fine face a little more pallid, a little more nervous than its wont, as he stopped on his way up the hill with the Elder and Doctor Fuller, who was vehemently saying,—

“Oh, he’ll clear himself, Elder, he’ll clear himself; an unsuspicious man like Brother Lyford may be led into unadvised action from the very best and soundest of motives.”

“Then he must be restrained, for the safety of other people as well as for his own,” replied the Elder coldly. “If one of your fever patients took a fancy in his delirium to set the house afire, I don’t suppose you would leave him unchecked in his action, however blameless you might hold himself.”

“No, no;—and yet—and yet”—muttered the doctor, whose common sense found itself sadly at war with a whimsical fancy he had conceived for Lyford, who was to be sure a university-bred man, and an accomplished botanist, thus affording to the alumnus of Peter-house, Cambridge, opportunity, which he did not often enjoy, for conversation on his favorite topics.

His annoyance found, however, no farther expression until, entering the Fort, he pettishly exclaimed, “Well, if we are to find an honest man we shall need Diogenes’ lantern, or at any rate a twopenny dip or so.”

“’Tis the gathering storm,” replied Bradford in a depressed voice, as he stood upon the threshold of the low-ceiled chamber, lighted only by narrow slits intended more for defense than comfort. The bare benches were already occupied by some eighty or ninety men, their pointed hats, sombre doublets, and burnished “pieces” showing grotesquely through the gloom which seemed to solidify the shadows and exaggerate the lights, while an occasional flash of lightning added the last effect to the picture.

A restless movement, a sense rather than a sound of expectancy, a feeling of controversy, of doubt, of possible resistance, was in the air, and Bradford’s sensitive organization responded at once to the thrill.

“Pray for us mightily to-day, Elder, pray for unworthy me,” whispered he, as the two ascended the platform at the head of the hall, where stood the governor’s armchair with seats at either hand for his five assistants, and benches for such persons as should be invited to occupy them.

To this appeal the Elder responded only by a searching glance from eyes of cold and wintry gray, and, passing on, he took his place at the governor’s right hand, while Allerton and Doctor Fuller seated themselves at the left. Winslow’s place was left vacant, and Standish, instead of assuming his, stood near the door, fully armed and equipped, watching Master Oldhame, who, with Lyford and several of their insolent followers, came strolling up the hill, laughing loudly, and displaying an exaggerated carelessness of demeanor.

As they entered, Standish, quietly placing himself between the two principals and their following, waved the latter to seats at the rear of the hall, and, courteously addressing the former, said,—

“The governor and council crave your presence upon the platform, gentlemen.”

“And why so much ceremony to-day, Captain Standish?” demanded Oldhame in a blustering attempt to imitate the suavity of the soldier. “We have had the privilege and the honor, if there be any, of sitting upon yon platform more than once already, and need not to be marshaled thither to-day more than on other days.”

“Ay, but to-day the governor designs to pay you some special attention, and your seats are not as before,” replied Standish grimly, and, without waiting for reply, strode on up the hall followed by the mutineers, who, in spite of their best efforts at audacity, presented an aspect of mingled apprehension and wrath, ill becoming the leaders of a righteous revolution.

The elevated seats were, indeed, a little differently arranged from usual. The five official chairs stood in their customary position, but no other seat remained except one bench placed near the edge of the platform, and at such an angle that the occupants faced both the governor and the mass of the people. To this bench Standish silently but peremptorily waved the two men, who both felt and appeared more like prisoners than guests. Hesitating a moment, Oldhame led the way up the steps, and before seating himself would have pushed back the bench so as to place it at right angles to the front edge of the platform, but found it secured to the flooring. With an angry scowl he was about to speak, but Bradford, raising a hand with quiet dignity, said,—

“Let be, if it please you, Master Oldhame. This Court of the People is convened to inquire into certain matters concerning you, and it is best that you should be placed in the front of the assembly that all men may both see and hear your innocence, if haply you can prove it.”

“Innocence, Master Governor! Innocence of what?” demanded Oldhame truculently, while Lyford’s face suddenly lost its color, and moistening his lips with his tongue, he cast such crafty and alarmed looks around the assembly that Giles Hopkins whispered to Philip De la Noye,—

“Mind you that rat we found in the trap t’other day? I wish I had my little dog here to worry him.”

“You shall be both heard and answered anon, friend,” replied Bradford patiently. “First, however, we will ask the Elder to lead us in prayer for guidance and for wisdom.”

Fervently and strongly did the Elder respond to this summons, nor did he at all forget the whispered petition Bradford had made in the moment of his weakness; and once again the prayer of faith became effectual, even in the moment of its utterance, so that when William Bradford said Amen it was in more calmness, more conscious strength, and more security of divine guidance, than he had been able to feel for days.

Standing before his people in all the simple dignity of his character and his position, he addressed them as friends, as associates, as freemen, taking for granted that each was as eager as himself to retain in all its completeness the great treasure of freedom and of self-government they had attained. “For,” said he, turning his eyes for a moment upon the traitors, and then reverting to his friends, “both ye and all the world know we came hither to enjoy the liberty of our conscience and the free use of God’s ordinances, and for that end have ventured our lives, and passed through much hardship hitherto; and we and our friends have borne the charge of these beginnings, which has not been small”—

“Spare us the preamble, I beseech you, Master Governor, and come to the root of the matter. Who has disturbed this somewhat sour-faced liberty and peace ye came here to seek?”

The insolence of the tone as well as of the words stirred even Bradford’s chastened temper, and turning upon the traitor he angrily exclaimed,—

“Who?—who but you, John Oldhame, you and your followers! As Nathan said to David, so say I now to you, Thou art the man!”

The stinging contempt of the tone pierced like an arrow, and fairly stammering with rage the rebel sprang to his feet and made for the governor, but Standish quietly interposed with voice and presence,—

“Best be seated, Master Oldhame! The matter has not yet come to a passage at arms. Sit down man, sit down!”

“Yes, Master Oldhame,” added the governor, resuming his usual self-restraint and manner of voice, “this is matter for sober discussion and not for heated wrangling.” Then turning to the people he continued calmly:

“It is well known not only to these but to you all, that when the Charity arrived here some weeks gone by she brought letters from the gentlemen Adventurers, upon whom we depend for aid and comfort, demanding account of certain ill stories that had traveled home by the Anne, partly on the tongues of those who, daunted by the hardness of the life here, went back as soon as they might, and partly in letters writ by those Laodiceans who remained with us but are not of us. These tales were for the most part idle, such as that we have no grass for cattle; no wholesome water; that salt will not cure fish here; that neither fish nor wild fowl are to be found, and alas, alas! that moskeetos are to be found both in our fields and housen, which, indeed, is a plaint we may not deny.

“With these were weightier matters, to which I, with the help of the Assistants, made answer as seemed good to us, as that we have neither Sacrament in use, to which we answer, How can we have when to our great grief our pastor, Master Robinson, is withholden from coming to us, and no worthy minister is sent to supply his place? Next, that we have great diversity of religious belief, and this is a thing never heard of till last Lord’s Day. But passing sundry other matters not best to enter upon now, we spoke to the lighter question, saying that although we do not contend that the water of our springs is as delightsome as the beer and wine these grumblers so sorely missed, it is as good, nay, I will say it is better, water than any other in the world, so far as I know of mine own experience. As for the lack of grass, we replied, Would we had one beast for every hundred that the grass would fatten. As for the lack of fish and fowl, and the story that salt would not cure fish caught in these waters, we did but ask, What is it brings so many sail to these parts year by year, and how do they carry home their fish, if they may not be cured?

“That fish may not be salted here is as true as that no ale or beer can be kept from souring in London. That we have thieves among us of late is sadly true, but if none were bred in England none would come hither, and as all men know, those who are caught have smarted well for their offense, and shall do so still more if they mend not their manners.

“But as for the moskeetos, we said, They were matter of such sadness and weight that we counseled such as cannot endure moskeeto bites to stay at home, at least until they are moskeeto proof, for surely they are all unfit for beginning new plantations, and must leave these emprises to hardier men.

“Glad am I to offer you matter of mirth and cheerfulness in the beginning, brethren, for now comes a tale of more serious import.

“Knowing that they who could write thus to our friends were still among us, it was but reasonable that we who stand as fathers to the colony should seek out who they were, and stop the mischief before it grew to larger dimensions. We have sought, and grieved am I to say we have found, these enemies where last we should have looked for them.

“Master John Oldhame, taking passage on the Anne with his family and his following, came among us as a stranger, asking at the first no more than permission to settle so near that in case of attack from Indians he might shelter under our wing, and profit by our countenance. We heartily bade him come and live in our village, helped him to build housen for himself and his people, portioned him a plot of land, aided him in every way that he desired, and gave him a voice in our assemblies.

“As for Master Lyford, he was, as you know, sent over at the company’s charges, him and his large family, Master Winslow who was then in England having been wrought upon by the Adventurers to accept him as a minister of the gospel, and fit to become our pastor. Arrived here, he received a house, a double portion of food and stores, a man to serve him at our charge, and all such honor and observance as we knew how to bestow, although we determined to tarry for a season before accepting him as our minister in full. But now, how have these two carried themselves among us? Have they repaid love with love, and good with good? or has it not rather been after the fashion of the hedgehog in the fable, which the coney in a bitter cold day invited to shelter in her burrow, which at first was meek and gentle enow, but anon when he was comforted and warm, thrust out his prickles and so vext the poor coney that in the end it was she who was thrust out into the cold.”

A low murmur of appreciation followed the parable, and Oldhame once more sprang to his feet, while Standish attentively followed every movement.

“So far as I can gather any serious meaning from the buffoonery Master Bradford intends for wit,” began he, “I take it that he accuseth me and this godly minister of treason to this colony, where as he meanly reminds us we have received certain benefits, for the which I am quite ready to pay”—

“Shame! Shame!”

“Shame as much as you will, Alden and Soule, Bartlett and Prence! I’ve marked you, my springalds, but what I’ve to say is that the inditing is false and altogether malicious. Neither Lyford nor I have writ any such letters, or sent any such message now or ever. Say you not so, Master Lyford?”

“Oh verily, verily, good gentlemen all, no such thought has ever”—

“There, that will do, man. And now we call upon you, Master Governor, for any warrant you may have for this insult, and if you have none, we demand an ample apology.”

“You positively deny writing any letters of complaint concerning us?” asked Bradford deliberately.

“We do.”

“Master Allerton, be pleased to bring forth the papers you hold in charge.”

Allerton, his crafty face illuminated with a smile of unusual satisfaction, brought forward a small table, and placed upon it some twenty or thirty letters, carefully arranged and docketed, in his neat and scholarly script. Laying his hand upon the papers, Bradford looked at the traitors with an austere sadness significant of his just yet gentle nature; then, turning to the people, he related how by the advice of his council he had seized these letters, already on their way to England, and with Winslow’s help copied the most of them, retaining, however, some of the originals with which to confront the writers in case of denial.

But as the governor in his calm and judicial voice made this announcement, glancing as he spoke at the documents spread out upon the little table, Oldhame, furious at the humiliating discovery of his lie, started again to his feet, foaming out all sorts of threats and defiance, and threatening indefinite but terrible vengeance. Finally turning to the benches with a gesture almost magnificent in its reckless abandon, he cried,—

“My masters, where are your hearts! Now is the time to show yourselves men! How oft have you groaned in my ears under the tyranny of these oppressors, and now is your time to fling off the yoke! Stand to your arms, brethren! Make a move, and I am with you!”

As he recognized the intent of this seditious appeal, Standish sprang forward, his hand upon his sword’s hilt, but Bradford, without rising, made a slight repressive gesture, and ran his eye quickly over the ranks of faces confronting him, marking the expression on each.

A few, notably Billington’s, Hicks’s, Hopkins’s, and some of the new-comers’, wore an anxious, a sheepish, or a frightened air, combined in two or three cases with truculence, and in others with doubt, but the great body of the freemen met the eye of their governor with cordial sympathy and reassurance, and although no man stirred, several handled their weapons and looked around them with an eagerness boding ill for the traitors should they proceed to extremity.

Oldhame also reviewed the fourscore faces arrayed before him, and was quick to perceive and accept his defeat.

“Ye coward dogs! Crouch under your master’s lash till it cut your hearts out! What is it to me or mine!”

The bitter words ground between his teeth reached no ears but those of Lyford, upon whom, as he sank cowering back upon the bench, Bradford next turned his eyes demanding,—

“What is your opinion, Master Lyford, upon this question of opening another’s letters?”

The ex-minister started as if stung by the lash of a whip, passed his hand across his trembling lips, and stammered,—

“I—I—I meant no harm. I”—

“Master Lyford answers the accusation of his own conscience rather than my question,” said Bradford serenely, as the quavering voice trailed away into silence. “The matter in his mind is this: When our brother, Edward Winslow, was about sailing out of England in the Charity, bringing with him this man who had been pushed upon him as a worthy substitute for our own revered pastor, he writ with his own hand to Master Robinson an account of the matter, with sundry other things touching the spiritual and temporal concerns of the company. This letter he sealed, addressed, and left lying in his state cabin, along with sundry others, some of his own inditing, and some intrusted to him by friends, to convey hither. One of these was from a well-known English gentleman to Elder Brewster, and bore both names upon the cover.

“Master Winslow’s affairs calling him back to London before the sailing of the vessel, he left all these letters in his writing-case under charge of Master Lyford, who used the same cabin. But no sooner was Winslow’s back turned than Master Lyford, opening the chest with keys of his own, read the letters, and made copies of the two mentioned, telling under his own hand how he obtained them. These copies he brought hither, and now is sending them back into England by the Charity, and small charity of the godly sort doth he show in his comments inclosed with the copies to one of our most powerful and unloving opponents among the Adventurers.

“And why hath he done this? Not to fulfill a heavy and painful duty, and to protect a people and an emprise laid upon him by Almighty God, even as the children of Israel were laid upon the shoulders of Moses until he all but sank beneath the weight! No, Master Lyford can plead no such necessity for the opening and reading of letters writ and sealed by one who trusted him, but rather his motive seems to have been the desire of doing despite to his benefactors, and of working mischief and destruction to them who have never done him other than kindness, trusting and befriending him as one of themselves.

“And now, Master Allerton, I will ask you to read out these letters, and any who will may draw near and look at the originals signed both by John Oldhame and John Lyford.”

The letters were read, and as page after page of Lyford’s malignant treachery, and Oldhame’s fierce vituperation was turned, murmurs of indignation, ominous mutterings, with here and there a groan or a faint hiss arose from the benches, especially when the freemen heard it recommended that the Adventurers should, as soon as possible, send a body of men “to over-sway those here;” that they should at all risks prevent Pastor Robinson’s coming, and should, if possible, depose Winslow from his position as agent. Again a subdued commotion was excited by the advice to send over a certain captain, who had apparently been previously mentioned, with the promise that he should at once be chosen military leader, “for this Captaine Standish looks like a silly boy, and is in utter contempt.”

In hearing this philippic many an eye was turned upon its subject, but he, standing at ease with one hand upon Gideon’s hilt, only gathered his beard in the other fist and smiled good-humoredly. He at least was “moskeeto-proof.”

“And now, men,” demanded the governor, turning to the people, “what have you to say? Let any one who would make a proposal as to our dealing with these two speak his mind freely.”

But before any other could reply to this demand, Lyford, breaking away from Oldhame’s fierce restraint, fell upon his knees, bursting into tears and sobs, wringing his hands, and cringing to the floor, while he howled out all sorts of self-accusations, calling himself a miserable sinner, “unsavorie salt,” Judas, and many other opprobrious epithets, doubting, as he professed, if God would ever pardon him, and in any case despairing of the forgiveness of his benefactors and hosts, for he had so wronged them as to pass all forgiveness. Finally, he confessed in the most abject terms that “all he had writ against them was false and naught, both for matter and manner,” and professed himself willing and anxious to retract everything in the presence of God, angels, and men.

But the scene was soon cut short, for the self-respecting men who listened to this abjection found it too great a humiliation of the divine image in man, and while the culprit still sobbed and whined at his feet, the governor, briefly ordering him to rise and be silent, turned to the people and repeated his demand for their suffrages.

A brief discussion ensued, chiefly among the elders, the younger men signifying their assent or dissent by a word or two, and Bradford, listening to all, watching the expression of all, and gathering the sense of the assembly as much by intuition as from spoken words, at last announced that the Court of the People found these two men guilty of the offenses with which they stood charged, and were decided to banish them from the settlement as dangerous to its safety. A murmur of assent ratified this decision, and the details arranged by the governor and council were unanimously accepted. Oldhame was to depart at once, while his family had permission to remain until he could find a comfortable home for them, and then rejoin him without his coming to fetch them.

As for Lyford, his retraction and professions of contrition had their effect, especially with the doctor, whose earnest appeals for indulgence finally procured permission for the penitent to remain in the village for six months on probation, his sentence then either to be acted upon or, in case his repentance should prove sincere, to possibly be altogether remitted.

The two culprits received their sentence very differently, yet very characteristically. Oldhame, breathing fire and fury, departed from the Fort at once in a blue flame of profanity and vituperation, and before night set sail for Nantasket to join the Gorges men settled in that neighborhood.

But the meaner traitor could hardly be persuaded to stand upon his feet, preferring to grovel at those of his judges, who for the most part received his demonstrations very coldly, Bradford suggesting, as he twisted away the hand Lyford was moistly kissing,—

“There’s a homely old proverb, master, which you might do well to recall: ‘Actions speak louder than words.’”

“And still another,” broke in John Alden, “says that ‘Promises butter no parsnips.’”

Thus ended the first trial for treason in America, and so was decided the most important cause ever brought before the Court of the People, a tribunal soon to be replaced by the trial by jury.

CHAPTER V.

HOW MISTRESS ALICE BRADFORD INTRODUCED HER SISTER PRISCILLA CARPENTER TO PLYMOUTH SOCIETY.

“Goodman, I’ve heavy news for you; so set your mind to bear it as best you may.”

“Nay, goodwife, your winsome face is no herald of bad news, and certes, I’ll not cross the bridge until it comes in sight.”

“Well, then, since words won’t daunt you, here’s a fact, sir! We are to have a merry-making, and gather all the young folk of the village, and Master Bradford will have to lay off the governor’s mantle of thought and worry, that he may be jocund with the rest.”

“Nay, then, Alice, ’tis indeed heavy news!” And the governor pulled a long face, and looked mock-miserable with all his might. “And is it a dispensation not to be gainsaid? Is there good cause that we should submit ourselves to an affliction that might, as it would seem, be spared?”

“Well, dear, you know that my sister Pris has come”—

“Do you tell me so! Now there is news in very deed! And how did Mistress Priscilla Carpenter reach these parts?”

“Now, Will! if you torment me so, I’ll e’en call in Priscilla Alden to take my part. She’ll give you quip for crank, I’ll warrant me.”

“Nay, nay, wife, I’ll be meek and good as your cosset lamb, so you’ll keep me under your own hand. Come now, let us meet this enemy face to face. What is it all?”

Alice, who, tender soul that she was, loved not even playful and mock contention, sighed a little, and folding her hands in her lap gently said,—

“It is all just as thou pleasest, Will, but my thought was to call together all the young people and make a little feast to bring those acquainted with Pris, who, poor maid, has found it a trifle dull and straitened here, after leaving her merry young friends in England.”

“Ever thinking of giving pleasure to others even at cost of much toil to thyself, sweetheart!” And the governor, placing a hand under his wife’s round chin, raised her face and kissed it tenderly again and again, until the soft pink flushed to the roots of the fair hair.

“Do as thou wilt, darling, in this and everything, and call upon me for what thy men and maids cannot accomplish.”

“Nay, I’ve help enough. Christian Penn is equal to two women, and sister Pris herself is very notable. Then Priscilla Alden will kindly put her hand to some of the dainty dishes, and she is a wonder at cooking, as you know.”

“Yes, she proved it in—early days,” interrupted Bradford, the smile fading off his face. “Had it not been for her skill in putting a savory touch to the coarsest food, I believe some of our sick folk would have died,—I am sure Dame Brewster would.”

“Oh, you poor souls! How you suffered, and I there in England eating and drinking of the best, and—oh, Will, you should have married good dear Priscilla to reward her care of what I held so carelessly.”

“Wonderful logic, madam! I should, to reward Mistress Molines for her care, have married her, when she loved another man, and I another woman, which latter was to thus be punished for carelessness in a matter she knew naught about!”

And with a tender little laugh, the governor pressed another kiss upon his wife’s smooth cheek, before he went out to his fields, while she flew at once to her kitchen and set the domestic engine throbbing at double-quick time. Then she stepped up the hill to John Alden’s house, and found Priscilla, her morning work already done, washing and dressing her little Betty, while John and Jo watched the operation with unflagging interest.

“Come and help you, Alice? I shall be gay and glad to do it, dear, just as soon as Betty is in her cradle, and I have told Mary-à-Becket what to do about the noon-meat. John, you and Jo run up the hill to the captain’s, and ask Mistress Standish if Alick and Myles may come down and play with you in front of the governor’s house so I may keep an eye on you.”

“Two fine boys, those of Barbara’s,” said the governor’s wife, and then affectionately, “yet no finer than your sturdy little knaves.”

“Oh, ours are well enough for little yeomen, but the captain says his Alick is heir to a great estate, and is a gentleman born!” And the two young women laughed good-naturedly, while Priscilla laid her baby in the cradle, and Alice turned toward the door saying, “Well, I must be at home to mind the maids.”

“And I’ll be there anon. I trust you’ve good store of milk and cream. We did well enow without it for four years, but now we’ve had it for a while, one might as well be dead as lack it.”

“I’ve plenty, and butter beside, both Dutch and fresh,” replied Alice from outside the door, and in another ten minutes the wide kitchen recently added to William Bradford’s house on the corner of Leyden Street and the King’s Highway, now called Main Street, hummed again with the merry sounds of youthful voices, of the whisking of eggs, and grinding of spices, and stirring of golden compounds in wooden bowls, and chopping suet, and stoning raisins, and slicing citron, and the clatter of pewter dishes, which, by the way, with wooden ware were nearly all the “pottery” the Pilgrims possessed, hypothetical teapots and china cups to the contrary; for, since we all know that tea and coffee were never heard of in England until about the year 1666, and the former herb was sold for many years after at from ten to fifteen dollars per pound (Pepys in 1671 mentions it as a strange and barbaric beverage just introduced), it is improbable that either tea, teapot, or teacups ever reached America until after Mary Allerton, the last survivor of the Mayflower, rested upon Burying Hill.

All that day and part of the next the battle raged in the Bradford kitchen, for delicate appetites were in those times rather a defect than a grace, and hospitality largely consisted in first providing great quantities and many varieties of food, and then over-pressing the guests to partake of it. An “afternoon tea” with diaphanous bread and butter, wafer cakes, and Cambridge salts, as the only solid refreshment, would have seemed to Alice Bradford and her guests either a comic pretense or a niggardly insult, and very different was the feast to which as many as could sat down at a very early hour of the evening of the second day.

The company was large, for in the good Old Colony fashion it included both married and single persons, and would, if possible, have made no distinctions of age or position, but this catholicity had in the growth of the colony become impossible, and Mistress Bradford’s invitations were, with much searching of spirit and desire to avoid offense, confined principally to young persons, married and unmarried, likely to become associates of her sister Priscilla, a fair-haired, sweet-lipped, and daintily colored lass, reproducing Dame Alice’s own early charms.

“The Brewster girls must come, although I cannot yet be reconciled to Fear’s having married Isaac Allerton, and calling herself mother to Bart, and Mary and Remember—great grown girls!” exclaimed the hostess in consultation with her husband, and he pleasantly replied,—

“Oh, well, dame, we must not hope to guide all the world by our own wisdom; and certes, if Fear’s marriage is a little incongruous, her sister Patience is well and fitly mated with Thomas Prence. It does one good to see such a comely and contented pair of wedded sweethearts.”

“True enough, Will, and your thought is a rebuke to mine.”

“Nay, wife, ’tis you that teach me to be charitable.”

And the two, come together to reap in the glorious St. Martin’s summer of their days the harvest sown amid the chill tears of spring, looked in each other’s eyes with a smile of deep content. The woman was the first to set self aside, and cried,—

“Come, come, Sir Governor! To business! Mistress Allerton, and her daughters, Mary and Remember, Bartholomew, and the Prences, Constance Hopkins with Nicholas Snow, whom she will marry, the Aldens, the captain and his wife”—

“He is hardly to be ranked with the young folk, is he?”

“No, dear, no more than Master Allerton, or, for that matter, the governor and his old wife; but there, there, no more waste of time, sir! Who else is to come, and who to be left at home?”

“Nay, wife, I’m out of my depth already and will e’en get back to firm land, which means I leave all to your discretion. Call Barbara and Priscilla Alden to council, and let me know in time to put on my new green doublet and hose, for I suppose I am to don them.”

“Indeed you are, and your ruffles and your silk stockings that I brought over. I will not let you live altogether in hodden gray, since even the Elder goes soberly fine on holidays.”

“Well, well, I leave it all to you, and must betake myself to the woods. Good-by for a little.”

“Good-by, dear.”

And as the governor with an axe on his shoulder strode away down Market Street and across the brook to Watson’s Hill, Dame Alice, a kerchief over her head, once more ran up the hill to Priscilla Alden’s.

As the great gun upon the hill boomed out the sunset hour, and Captain Standish himself carefully covered it from the dews of night, Alice Bradford stood in the great lower room of her house and looked about her. All was done that could be done to put the place in festal array, and although the fair dame sighed a little at the remembrance of her stately home in Duke’s Place, London, with its tapestries and carvings and carpets and pictures, she bravely put aside the regret, and affectionately smoothed and patted the fine damask “cubboard cloth” covering the lower shelf of the sideboard, or, as she called it, the “buffet,” at one side of the room, and placed and replaced the precious properties set out thereon:—

A silver wine cup, a porringer that had been her mother’s, nine silver teaspoons, and, crown of all, four genuine Venetian wine-glasses, tall and twisted of stem, gold-threaded and translucent of bowl, fragile and dainty of shape, and yet, like their as dainty owner, brave to make the pilgrimage from the home of luxury and art to the wilderness, where a shelter from the weather and a scant supply of the coarsest food was all to be hoped for.

But Dame Bradford, fingering her Venice glasses, and softly smiling at the touch, murmured to herself and to them, “’Tis our exceeding gain.”

“What, Elsie, not dressed!” cried Priscilla Carpenter’s blithe voice, as that young lady, running down the stairs leading to her little loft chamber, presented herself to her sister’s inspection with a smile of conscious deserving.

“My word, Pris, but you are fine!” exclaimed Dame Alice, examining with an air of unwilling admiration the young girl’s gay apparel and ornaments. It was indeed a pretty dress, consisting of a petticoat of cramoisie satin, quilted in an elaborate pattern of flowers, leaves, and birds; an open skirt of brocade turned back from the front, and caught high upon the hips with great bunches of cramoisie ribbons; a “waistcoat” of the satin, and a little open jacket of the brocade. Around the soft white throat of the wearer was loosely knotted a satin cravat of the same dull red tint with the skirt, edged with a deep lace, upon which Alice Bradford at once laid a practiced finger.

“Pris, that jabot is of Venise point! Where did you get it?”

“Ah! That was a present from”—

“Well, from whom?”

“Nay, never look so cross on’t, my lady sister! Might not I have a sweetheart as well as you?”

“Priscilla, I’m glad you’re here rather than with those gay friends of yours in London. I suppose Lady Judith Carr or her daughters gave you these clothes, did they not?”

“Well, I earned them hard enough putting up with all my lady’s humors and the girls’ jealous fancies,” pouted Pris. “I was glad enough when you and brother Will wrote and offered me a home,—not but what Lady Judith was good to me and called me her daughter; but, Elsie, ’twas not they who gave me the laced cravat, ’twas—’twas”—

“Well, out with it, little sister! Who was it, if not our mother’s old friend?”

“Why, Elsie, ’twas a noble gentleman that I met with them down at Bath, and—sister—he is coming over here to marry me right soon.”

“Nay, then, but that’s news indeed! And what may be his name, pet?”

“Sir Christopher Gardiner, and he’s a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.”

And Pris, fondling the lace of her cravat, smiled proudly into her sister’s astonished face; but before either could speak, Barbara Standish and Priscilla Alden appeared at the open door, the latter exclaiming in her blithe voice,—

“What, Alice, still in your workaday kirtle! Barbara and I came thus betimes to see if aught remained that we might do before the folk gather.”

“Thank you, both; I—I—nay, then, I’m a little put about, dear friends; I hardly know,—well, well! Priscilla Carpenter, come you into my bedroom and help me do on my clothes, and if you two will look about and see what is ready and what is lacking, I shall be more than grateful. Come, Pris!”

“Something has chanced more than we know about!” suggested Priscilla Alden, as the bedroom door closed behind the sisters.

“Likely. But ’tis their affair and not ours,” replied Barbara quietly. “Now let us see. Would you set open the case holding the twelve ivory-handled knives?”

“Yes, they’re a rarity, and some of the folk may not have seen them. Alice says that in London they put a knife to every man’s trencher now, and nobody uses his own sheath-knife as has been the wont.”

“You tell me so! Well, one knife’s enough for Myles and me, yes, and the boys to boot. But then I cut the meat in morsels, and spread the bread with butter, or ever it goes on the table.”

“Of course; so we all do, I suppose. Well there, all is ready now, and here come the folk; there’s Patty Brewster, or Patience Prence as she must now be called, and along with her Fear Allerton and Remember and Mary,—her daughters indeed! Marry come up! I might have had Isaac Allerton for myself, but”—

“And there is Constance Hopkins, and Nicholas Snow,” interrupted Barbara, who was a deadly foe to gossip, “and John and Elizabeth Howland; then there’s Stephen Dean with Betsey Ring, and Edward Bangs and Lyddy Hicks, and Mary Warren and Robert Bartlett, three pair of sweethearts together, and here they all are at the door.”

But as the more lively Priscilla ran to open it, the governor’s hearty voice was heard without, crying,—

“Welcome! Welcome, friends! I was called out for a moment, but have come home just in the nick of time and brought the captain with me.”

“Now I do hope Myles has put on his ruff, and his other doublet that I laid out,” murmured Barbara in Priscilla’s ear. “When the governor and he get together, the world’s well lost for both of them.”

“Nay, he’s all right, and a right proper man, as he always was,” returned Priscilla, with a quick glance at the square figure and commanding head of the Captain of Plymouth, as he entered the room and smiled in courtly fashion at Dame Bradford’s greeting.

“And here’s your John, a head and shoulders above all the rest,” added Barbara good-naturedly, as Alden, the Saxon giant, strode into the room and looked fondly across it at his wife.

Another half hour and all were gathered about the three long tables improvised from boards and barrels, but all covered with the fine napery brought from Holland by Alice Bradford, who had the true housewife’s love of elegant damask, and during Edward Southworth’s life was able to indulge it, laying up such store of table damask, of fine Holland “pillowbers”[1] and “cubboard cloths,” towels of Holland, of dowlas, and of lockorum, and sheets of various qualities from “fine Holland” to tow (the latter probably spun and woven at home), that the inventory of her personal estate is as good reading to her descendants as a cookery book to a hungry man.

Plenty of trenchers both of pewter and wood lined the table, and by each lay a napkin and a spoon, but neither knives nor forks, the latter implement not having yet been invented, except in the shape of a powerful trident to lift the boiled beef from the kettle, while table knives, as Priscilla Alden had intimated, were still regarded as curious implements of extreme luxury. A knife of a different order, sometimes a clasp-knife, sometimes a sheath-knife, or even a dagger, was generally carried by each man, and used upon certain pièces de resistance, such as boar’s head, a roasted peacock, a shape of brawn, a powdered and cloved and browned ham, or such other triumphs of the culinary art as must be served whole.

Such dishes were carried around the table, and every guest, taking hold of the morsel he coveted with his napkin, sliced it off with his own knife, displaying the elegance of his table manners by the skill with which he did it. But as saffron was a favorite condiment of the day, and pearline was not yet invented, one sighs in contemplating the condition of these napkins, and ceases to wonder at the store of them laid up by thrifty housekeepers.

Ordinarily, however, the meat was divided into morsels before appearing on the table, and thus was easily managed with the spoon,—or with the fingers.

Between each two plates stood a pewter or wooden basin of clam chowder, prepared by Priscilla Alden, who was held in Plymouth to possess a magic touch for this and several other dishes.

From these each guest transferred a portion to his own plate, except when two supped merrily from the same bowl in token of friendly intimacy. This first course finished and the bowls removed, all eyes turned upon the governor, who rose in his place at the head of the principal table, where were gathered the more important guests, and, looking affectionately up and down the board, said,—

“Friends, it hardly needs that I should say that you are welcome, for I see none that are ever less than welcome beneath this roof; but I well may thank you for the cheer your friendly faces bring to my heart to-night, and I well may pray you, of your goodness, to bestow upon my young sister here the same hearty kindness you have ever shown to me and mine.” A murmur of eager assent went round the board, and the governor smiled cordially, as he grasped in both hands the great two-handled loving-cup standing before him,—a grand cup, a noble cup, of the measure of two quarts, of purest silver, beautifully fashioned, and richly carved, as tradition said, by the hand of Benvenuto Cellini himself; so precious a property that Katharine White, daughter of an English bishop, was proud to bring it as almost her sole dowry to John Carver, her husband. With him it came to the New World, and was used at the Feast of Treaty between the colonists and Massasoit, chief of the native owners of the soil. Katharine Carver, dying broken hearted six weeks after her husband, bequeathed the cup to William Bradford, his successor in the arduous post of Governor of the Colony, and from him it passed down into that Hades of lost and all but forgotten treasures, which may, for aught we know, become the recreation-ground for the spirits of antiquarians.

Filled to the brim with generous Canary, a pure and fine wine in those days, it crowned the table, and William Bradford, steadily raising it to his lips, smiled gravely upon his guests, adding to his little speech of welcome,—

“I pledge you my hearty good-will, friends!” then drank sincerely yet modestly, and giving one handle to Myles Standish, who sat at his left hand, he retained his hold at the other side while the captain drank, and in his turn gave one handle to Mistress Winslow, who came next, and so, all standing to honor the pledge of love and good-will, the cup passed round the board and came to Elder Brewster, at the governor’s right hand; but he, having drank, looked around with his paternal smile and said,—

“There is yet enough in the loving-cup, friends, for each one to wet his lips, if nothing more, and I propose that we do so with our hearty welcome and best wishes to Mistress Priscilla Carpenter.”

Once more the cup went gayly round, and reached the Elder so dry that he smiled, as he placed it to his lips, with a bow toward Pris savoring more of his early days in the court of Queen Bess than of New England’s solitudes.

“And now to work, my friends, to work!” cried the governor. “I for one am famished, sith my dame was so busy at noontide with that wonderful structure yonder that she gave me naught but bread and cheese.”

Everybody laughed, and Alice Bradford colored like a red, red rose, yet bravely answered,—

“The governor will have his jest, but I hope my raised pie will suffer roundly for its interference with his dinner.”

“Faith, dame, but we’ll all help to punish it,” exclaimed Stephen Hopkins, gazing fondly at the elaborate mass of pastry representing, not inartistically, a castle with battlements and towers, and a floating banner of silk bearing an heraldic device. “Standish! we call upon you to lead us to the assault!”

“Nay, if Captain Standish is summoned to the field, my fortress surrenders without even a parley,” said Alice Bradford, as she gracefully drew the little banner from its place, and, laying it aside, removed a tower, a bastion, and a section of the battlement from the doomed fortress, and, loading a plate with the spoils of its treasury, planted the banner upon the top, and sent it to the captain, who received it with a bow and a smile, but never a word.

“Speak up, man!” cried Hopkins boisterously. “Make a gallant speech in return for the courtesy of so fair a castellaine.”

“Mistress Bradford needs no speech to assure her of my devoir,” replied the captain simply, and the governor added,—

“Our captain speaks more by deeds than words, and Gideon is his most eloquent interpreter. You have not brought him to-day, Captain.”

“No; Gideon sulks in these days of peace, and seldom stirs abroad.”

“Long may he be idle!” exclaimed the Elder, and a gentle murmur around the board told that the women at least echoed the prayer.

But Hopkins, seated next to Mistress Bradford, and watching her distribution of the pie, cared naught for war or peace until he secured a trencher of its contents, and presently cried,—

“Now, by my faith, I did not know such a pye as this could be concocted out of Yorkshire! ’Tis perfect in all its parts: fowl, and game, and pork, and forcemeat, and yolks of eggs, and curious art of spicery, and melting bits of pastry within, and stout-built walls without; in fact, there is naught lacking to such a pye as my mother used to make before I had the wit to know such pyes sing not on every bush.”

“You’re Yorkshire, then, Master Hopkins?” asked John Howland, who with his young wife, once Elizabeth Tilley, sat opposite.

“Yes, I’m Yorkshire, root and branch, and you’re Essex, and the captain and the governor Lancashire, but all shaken up in a bag now, and turned into New Englanders, and since the Yorkshire pye has come over along with us I’m content for one.”

A general laugh indorsed this patriotic speech, but Myles Standish, toying with the silken banner of the now sacked and ruined fortress, said in Bradford’s ear,—

“All very well for a man who has naught to lose in the old country. But for my part I mean to place at least my oldest son in the seat of his fathers.”

The governor smiled, and then sighed. “Nor can I quite forget the lands of Austerfield held by Bradfords and Hansons for more than one century, and the path beside the Idle, where Brewster and I walked and talked in the days of my first awakening to the real things of life”—

“Real things of life, say you, Governor?” broke in Hopkins’s strident voice; “well, if there is aught more real in its merit than this roasted suckling, I wish that I might meet with it.”

And seizing with his napkin the hind leg of the little roasted pig presented to him by Christian Penn, the old campaigner deftly sliced it off with his sheath-knife and devoured it in the most inartificial manner possible.

It was probably about this epoch that our popular saying, “Fingers were made before forks,” took shape and force.

To the chowder, and the “pye,” and the roasted suckling succeeded a mighty dish of succotash, that compound of dried beans, hulled corn, salted beef, pork, and chicken which may be called the charter-dish of Plymouth; then came wild fowl dressed in various ways, a great bowl of “sallet,” of Priscilla Alden’s composition, and at last various sweet dishes, still served at the end of a meal, although soon after it was the mode to take them first.

“Oh, dear, when will the dignities stop eating and drinking and making compliments to each other?” murmured Priscilla Carpenter to Mary Warren at the side table where the girls and lads were grouped together, enjoying themselves as much as their elders, albeit in less ceremonious fashion.

“There! Your sister has laid down her napkin, and is gazing steadfastly at the governor, with ‘Get up and say Grace’ in her eye,” replied Mary, nudging Jane Cooke to enforce silence; whereat that merry maid burst into a giggle, joined by Sarah and Elizabeth Warren, and Mary Allerton, and Betsey Ring, while Edward Bangs, and Robert Bartlett, and Sam Jenney, and Philip De la Noye, and Thomas Clarke, and John Cooke chuckled in sympathy, yet knew not what at.

A warning yet very gentle glance from Dame Bradford’s eyes stifled the noise, and nearly did as much for its authors, who barely managed to preserve sobriety, while the governor returned thanks to the Giver of all good; so soon, however, as the elder party moved away, the painfully suppressed giggle burst into a storm of merriment, which as it subsided was renewed in fullest vigor by Sarah Warren’s bewildered inquiry,—

“What are we all laughing at?”

“Never mind, we’ll laugh first, and find the wherefore at our leisure,” suggested Jane Cooke, and so the dear old foolish fun that seems to spring up in spontaneous growth where young folk are gathered together, and is sometimes scorned and sometimes coveted by their elders, went on, and, after the tables were cleared, took form in all sorts of old English games, not very intellectual, not even very refined, but as satisfactory to those who played as Buried Cities, and Twenty Questions, and Intellectual Salad, and capping Browning quotations are to the children of culture and æsthetics.

The elders, meanwhile, retiring to the smaller room at the other side of the front door, seated themselves to certain sober games of draughts, of backgammon, of loo, and beggar-my-neighbor, or picquet, while Elder Brewster challenged the governor to a game of chess which was not finished when, at ten o’clock, the company broke up, and with many a blithe good-night, and assurance of the pleasure they had enjoyed, betook themselves to their own homes.

Thus, then, was Priscilla Carpenter introduced into Plymouth society.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Pillow-biers, now called pillow-cases.

CHAPTER VI.

A VIPER SCOTCHED, NOT KILLED.

“’Tis meat for my masters,” muttered William Wright, plodding stubbornly up the hill toward the Fort; but as he passed John Alden’s door the sturdy, middle-aged man paused to watch, with a smile of admiration rather strange to his commonplace visage, a game of romps between little Betty Alden and Priscilla Carpenter, and indeed it was a pretty sight. The maiden, her full yet lissome figure displayed in a short skirt of blue cloth and a kirtle of India chintz belted down by a little white apron, was teasing the child with a cluster of ripe blackberries held just beyond her reach, and, dancing hither and yon as Betty pursued, showed her pretty feet and ankles to perfection, while the exercise and fresh air had tinted her cheeks and brightened her eyes as cosmetics never could, and set a thousand little airy curls loose from the fair hair braided in a long plait down her back.

“You can’t catch me, Betty! You can’t have the plums till you catch me, and you can’t—ah, now—catch if you can—catch if you can!”

But Betty, shrieking with laughter as she dived this way and that, suddenly grew so grave and frowned so terribly as she pointed her chubby finger and stammered, “Go ’way—s’ant look o’ me—go ’way man!” that Priscilla turned sharply round, and catching the interloper in the very midst of a broad smile, she frowned, almost as terribly as Betty, and loftily inquired,—

“Am I in your path, Master Wright?”

“Nay, how could that be?” stammered Wright, utterly abashed before his two accusers. “I pray you excuse me, Mistress Prissie, but I—I was looking for the governor, and”—

“The governor?” interrupted Priscilla scornfully; “well, he’s not in my pocket, is he in yours, Betty?”

And catching up the child, she was retreating into the house, when her admirer interposed with an air of dignity more becoming to his age and appearance than the confusion of a detected intruder upon a girl’s pastime,—

“Nay, mistress, I need not drive you away; I am going to the Fort.”

“Well, there is the governor coming down from the Fort so as to leave room for you,” retorted Prissie, and setting the child inside the door, she fled down the hill as lightly as the wind that chased her.

“Good-morrow, Wright,” cried Bradford cheerily, as the two men met.

“Good-morrow, Governor. May I have a word with you on business?”

“Surely. Come back to the Fort, where I have just left the captain. Ah, here he is now!”

And the three men were soon seated in the captain’s little den, flooded with sunshine through its eastern window.

“I sail in the Little James to-day, sirs,” began Wright abruptly; “and but now, not an hour agone, Master Lyford gave me this letter, praying me to hold it secret, and carry it to its address in London, and he would give me five shilling when I returned. Now, sirs, I am not a man to be hired for five shilling to do any man’s dirty work, and I liked not Master Lyford’s look or voice as he gave me his errand, nor have I forgot the matters concerning him and John Oldhame a while ago, and so—here ’s the letter, Governor.”

“Ha! ’Tis to the same address, Captain! Our well-known enemy and gainsayer among the Adventurers.”

“Ay. The old proverb come true again of the dog that turns from good victual to vile,” muttered Standish grimly. “And I suppose it is to be opened like the rest? Work I do not relish, Governor.”

“Nor I. But Winslow and Allerton are both away, and you must come with me to the Elder. In his presence and yours I shall open and read this letter, as is my bounden duty.”

And Bradford, leaning back in his chair, looked straight into the face of the captain, who, returning the gaze with one of his keen glances, nodded assent, saying in a surly voice,—

“You are the governor. It is for you to order and me to obey, but I like it not.”

“As for you, Wright, you have done well and wisely in this matter. The James sails at three of the clock; come you to my house at two, and I will return you the letter with one of mine own.”

“Will Priscilla Carpenter be in the room!” wondered William Wright, as he took his leave.

The letter examined by the triumvirate of governor, Elder, and captain proved that Lyford’s penitence, if indeed it had ever existed, had spent its strength in protestation. The writer alluded to the letters the governor had allowed to go forward, either by original or copy, and declared that all they had stated was true, “only not the half,” and that since their discovery he had been persecuted and browbeaten to the verge of existence, and all because he loved and clung to the Prayer Book and his Episcopal ordination. The letter closed with entreaties that a sufficient body of settlers, with military leaders, should at once be sent over to crush his present hosts and set him at liberty to follow his conscience.

“At least, we may at once grant our brother liberty to follow his conscience in matters spiritual,” remarked the Elder with a grave smile, as he laid down the letter. “I think it will be best to summon a church meeting for next Lord’s Day, and utterly dismiss Master Lyford from our fellowship and communion. It is no less than sacrilege for a man who can write after this fashion to sit down at the Lord’s table with us, professing to be of us.”

“You are right, Elder,” replied Bradford sternly, “and I leave the spiritual matter to you; but it is my duty, and one not to be slighted, to drive this traitor out of our body politic. He must leave Plymouth at once. Say you not so, Captain Standish?”

“I say, bundle him into the Little James and send him back to England to his dear cronies there, or, better still, strip off his gown and bands and hang him as a traitor.”

“To send him to England we have no warrant, nor would it be wise to invite English legislation in our particular affairs,” retorted the governor; “and as for hanging him, it is a course open both to these same objections and to something more. No, we shall simply bid him leave the colony and not return hither on any pretense. The wife and children may remain until he has a home whither to carry them.”

“A righteous judgment,” pronounced the Elder, and as Standish growled assent, the matter was settled, and so promptly carried into effect that in less than forty-eight hours the renegade forever turned his back upon the place and the people who had trusted and honored him, and whom, had he been a faithful servant of his Master and the Church, he might undoubtedly have led to a renewed allegiance to the venerable Mother whose unwise severity rather than whose doctrine had driven them from the home of their ancestors.

“There goes a viper scotched, not killed, and we shall feel his sting yet,” remarked Standish, as he with Peter Browne and John Alden stood on the brow of Cole’s Hill, and watched Lyford’s embarkation in a fishing-boat belonging to Nantucket, where Oldhame had pitched his tent for a while. Here also, or at neighboring Weymouth, Blackstone, Maverick, Walford, and a few other of the Gorges party had succeeded to the houses left empty by Weston’s men after their deliverance by Myles Standish from Pecksuot, Wituwamat, and their horde. In course of time, Blackstone, carrying his clergyman’s coat, removed to Boston Common, Walford to Charlestown, and Maverick to East Boston, each man representing the entire population of each place; but still some settlers remained on the old site, so that from the time of Weston’s arrival in 1622, this neighborhood has been the home of white men.

“Scotched, not killed,” repeated Standish, filling his pipe, as he sat and mused in the autumn sunshine outside of his cabin door, while Barbara in her noiseless but competent fashion got ready a savory supper within, and Alick, with a bow made for him by Hobomok, fired not unskillful arrows at a target set upon the hillside.

A week later the captain’s words came true, for the same fishing boat that had carried away Lyford put into Plymouth Harbor on an ebb tide, and sent off her boat with four men, one of whom was soon recognized as Oldhame. As the banished man leaped upon the Rock, followed by his comrades, all strangers to Plymouth, some of the older townsmen met him, and one of them gravely inquired his business.

“Business quotha!” blustered Oldhame, who was evidently the worse for liquor. “My business is first to tweak Billy Bradford’s nose, and then to kick Myles Standish into a rat-hole, and finally to burn down your wretched kennels, and root up this doghole of a place, where I and my friends have met such scurvy treatment.”

“An’ your errand is so large an one, you had better go and seek the governor and his assistants without delay,” replied Francis Cooke, waving his hand up Leyden Street, and restraining by a look some of the younger men, who seemed disposed to dispute the landing.

“Why, so I will, Cooke; I’ll go up and speak to your masters, but not my masters, mind you, good Cooke; good Cooke, ha, ha! Come, now, hop into my boat and I’ll carry you home to be my cook, mine own good cook, Francis! Hop in, I say!”

And the roysterer, with a roar of drunken laughter, strode up the hill, the strangers, who looked both anxious and ashamed, following slowly after him.

In the Town Square the invaders encountered Bradford with Doctor Fuller and Stephen Hopkins, and Oldhame, pushing himself into the group, began a violent tirade upon the abuses and insults that he averred had been offered both him and Lyford, and was proceeding to the most scurrilous threats and vituperations, when the governor, beckoning Bart Allerton, who, with several other young men, was hanging around the group of elders, said calmly,—

“Bart, find Captain Standish, and bid him summon a couple of the train-band, and bring them hither.”

“Oho! Captain Shrimp is to appear on the scene, is he? Well, I’ve come here to settle old scores with him as well as the rest! Go fetch him, Bart; trot, boy, trot!”

“It needs not to fetch him, Master Oldhame, since he is here at your service.” Thus speaking, the captain, who had been hastening down the hill before he was summoned, strode into the circle, a grim smile upon his face and the red light of battle in his eye.

“Ha! my little bantam cock! are you there?” And the reckless fellow aimed a backhanded blow at the captain’s face, which the latter easily evaded by a side-movement, and returned with a square blow from the shoulder, taking effect under Oldhame’s jaw, and sending him staggering back into the arms of one of his new comrades.

“Enough, enough!” exclaimed Bradford, holding up his hand. “A street brawl is not befitting or seemly. Captain Standish, arrest this man, and put him in the strong-room until we consider what measure to deal out to him.”

“The tide is gone, or we would carry him aboard and be off altogether,” suggested one of the strangers.

“Possibly not,” quietly returned the governor. “It might not seem right to so lightly dismiss such an offense. We would bear ourselves meekly with all men, but it is not meet that our townsfolk should see their leaders insulted and braved thus insolently with impunity.”

“Captain Gorges would have run a man through for less,” replied the other. “But Oldhame said the Plymouth men were crop-eared psalm-singers, who would not fight.”

“If Plymouth men had not fought to some purpose on the spot where you have settled, you would have found but sorry housing there,” retorted Standish savagely, as he led his captive away, securely bound, and Bradford in his usual calm tones explained,—

“After our captain had slain Pecksuot and Wituwamat and dispersed their following, he nailed a placard to the tree at the gate of the stockade, whereon he had hung one of the ringleaders, warning the savages that if they burned or destroyed the dwellings that remained, he would come back and serve them as he had their misleader; and this cartel, although they could not read it, so terrified their superstitious fancies that Captain Gorges found housen for his men, and a stoccado to protect them.”

“Yes,” replied the stranger, gazing curiously after Standish, “we found the bones of the hanged man lying in a heap under the tree, and the marks of a deadly fray in the house where Pecksuot fell.”

“Ay, so. It was a sad necessity, and one almost as grievous to us as to the savages,” returned Bradford. “Now, sirs, we have no quarrel with you, nor wish for any. Your skiff will not float until three hours after noon, and when she does we shall doubtless send away Master Oldhame in her; meantime, you are welcome to look about and see our town and Fort, and discourse with the people. Master Hopkins, will you see that these men have some dinner?”

“Such as ’tis, they’re welcome to some of mine,” promptly replied Hopkins, whose comfortable house stood on the corner of Leyden and Main streets just opposite the governor’s, and whose garden stretched along to Middle Street, not yet laid out. The size and convenience of his house, and the bountiful and cheerful hospitality of his wife, who, with the aid of her daughters Constance, Damaris, and Deborah, administered the domestic affairs, combining English thrift and neatness with colonial abundance, gave Hopkins the frequent opportunity of entertaining visitors to Plymouth, while Bradford saw that he was no loser by such a course.

Meanwhile the governor and his council sat in conclave, secure that their decision would find favor with the people, or at any rate with that nucleus and backbone of the commonalty known as “the first-comers,” meaning the passengers of the Mayflower, the Fortune, and the Anne, with her tender the Little James.

At noon the tide turned, and the town went to dinner. About half past two Bartholomew Allerton beat the “assembly” in the Town Square, and at the well-understood summons men, women, and children gathered in the square, or clustered in the open doorways, all filled with curiosity as to the mode of punishment about to be meted out to the returned exile, and yet none in the least doubt as to its justice. Even the men whom he had brought with him to be the witnesses of his triumph stood supinely to view his disgrace, muttering among themselves, and casting uneasy glances down the hill to where their shallop lay still aground at the foot of the Rock, while the larger boat hardly swung afloat on the breast of the young tide.

Three o’clock, and the governor, the Elder, and the captain came out of the house of the first, robed in their official garments, and stood upon a platform of squared logs erected at the intersection of the streets and mounted with two small cannon called patereros. A blast from the trumpet, and the gate of the Fort upon the hill swung open, and out came a strange procession: first, Bart Allerton with his drum, and three other young fellows with wind instruments, who rendered a fair imitation of the Rogue’s March; then twenty picked men, mostly from among the first-comers, each carrying his snaphance reversed; then Master Oldhame, bareheaded and barefooted, and with his arms tied across his chest; and finally, Lieutenant John Alden, bearing a naked sword, followed by a guard of four men well armed.

Down the hill they came at a foot-pace, the bugles and trumpet shrilling out their contemptuous cadences, and Oldhame, his pride subdued and his pot-valiancy all evaporated, stepping delicately as Agog, for the pebbles hurt his bare feet, and perhaps feeling with Agog that the bitterness of death was at his lips.

Before the platform, where stood the magnates and the cannon, the procession paused, the music ceased, and upon the silence rose the governor’s calm, strong voice.

“John Oldhame, you have come hither in defiance of the formal edict of this government banishing you from the colony; and you have come with violence and insult, refusing to accept warning, or to depart peaceably. We therefore have resolved that since you return dishonorably, you shall depart in dishonor, taking with you the warning for the future, that the barrels of our pieces are more deadly than their stocks. Go, and mend your manners!”

He waved his hand, and the bugles recommenced their blare, while the twenty men opened their ranks and ranged themselves in two lines some three feet apart, but not directly opposite each other.

“Go on, prisoner!” ordered Alden, touching Oldhame with the hilt of his sword. “Go, and mend your manners!” And as the cowed yet furious rebel stepped forward, the first man of the line struck upward with the stock of his reversed musket, saying,—

“Go, and mend your manners!” The next instant the same blow and the same words fell from the minuteman diagonally opposite, and so down the entire line, until as the twentieth blow and twenty-second adjuration to “Go, and mend your manners” fell upon the humiliated bully, he broke down utterly, and with a howl of mingled rage and pain bolted into the door of John Howland’s house next below Stephen Hopkins’s, but was met by Elizabeth, who with little John clinging to her skirts and Desire in her arms boldly faced the intruder for a moment, and then looking into his streaming face and hunted eyes cried pitifully,—

“Oh, poor soul!” and seizing the scissors at her girdle cut the band confining his arms, and catching up a tankard of ale set ready for her husband held it to his lips, muttering,—

“Mayhap ’tis treason, but there, poor creature, drink, and then slink away down the hill while— Why, what’s to do now in the street?”

“Why don’t you say, ‘Go, and mend your manners!’” hoarsely asked Oldhame; but still he drank, and then, glancing over his hostess’s shoulder as she stood in the doorway, he swore a great oath, and pushing her rudely aside dashed out and down the hill to his boat.

For, unseen by the townsmen, all of them absorbed in the punishment parade, the ship Jacob, Captain William Pierce, had sailed into harbor upon the flood-tide, dropped anchor beside the Nantucket fishing craft, and set ashore her master, with his distinguished passenger Edward Winslow, who had been to England to try to straighten the tangled relations between the Pilgrims and the Adventurers, already playing fast and loose with their promises.

Some good-natured raillery from Captain Pierce upon the negligent outlook kept by the colonists served to relieve the strain of the late occurrence, and as Winslow with a face full of portent followed the governor into his house, John Oldhame stepped aboard the fishing vessel, and sailed out of Plymouth Harbor in a condition of unwonted quiet and humiliation.

CHAPTER VII.

MORTON OF MERRY MOUNT.

“Well, Master Trumpeter, and what do you make of yon craft? Are the Don Spaniards coming to invade New Plymouth, or has the king sent to impress you as major-domo of the royal hand?”

“Good-morrow, Captain Standish. The governor lent me his perspective glass, and sent me up on the hill to spy out who was coming.”

“And that’s all right, Bart. No need to make excuse for doing the governor’s bidding, my lad.”

“I was thinking, Captain, you found it strange to see me on the Fort without notice to you”—

“And so came up to call you to account? No, my boy, I know who’s to be trusted and who not, else had I served in vain through those long years in the Low Countries. Had it been Gyles Hopkins now, or Jack Billington— But there, what make you of the craft?”

“I think, sir, ’tis Master Maverick’s boat from Noddle’s Island, and there are four men in her whose faces I cannot yet make out.”

“A friendly visit, belike. Stay you here, Bart, until you can determine the craft, and then carry the news to the governor. I am going down to the Rock on mine own occasions.”

Bowling merrily along before an easterly breeze, the ketch soon rounded Beach Point, and dropped her anchor opposite the village, but in midstream, and so soon as the sails were snugged, and all made ready for some possible change of weather, the four visitors stepped into a skiff and were sculled ashore by a tall, fine-looking young fellow, whose bronzed face and lithe figure were well set off by the buckskin hunting-shirt and red cap worn with a jaunty air not inharmonious with the young man’s roving black eyes and flashing smile.

“Master Maverick and his son, Master Blackstone from Shawmut, and Master Bursley and Master Jeffries from Wessagussett,” reported Bart Allerton, hat in hand, at the governor’s door, and Bradford, laying down his book, replied with a grave smile,—

“I will go to meet them.”

Half an hour later the three elder visitors with the governor, the captain, Allerton, Doctor Fuller, and one or two more, were closeted in the new room recently added to the governor’s house, and used by him as a council chamber and court room.

Moses Maverick, the handsome young boatman, had meanwhile somewhat pointedly sought out Bart Allerton, and almost invited himself to accompany him home.

“Go you into the front room and entertain him, Remember,” directed the young step-mother with a mischievous smile. “I am too busy with little Isaac to leave him just now.”

And Maverick received the apologies of his hostess with an air so strangely contented that Remember paused half way in making them, and faltered and blushed and laughed, very much as a modest but open-eyed girl would do to-day.

“I told you last Lady Day that I should soon be here again, Remember,” murmured the youth rather irrelevantly.

“I know naught of Lady Days,” retorted the Pilgrim maid with an effort at a saucy little laugh.

“’Tis because your father is a Separatist, but we Mavericks are sound Churchmen,” replied the lover. “Some day, mayhap, you’ll be better advised.”

Let us discreetly leave them to themselves, and seek the council chamber where Blackstone is saying,—

“Yes, Governor Bradford, we have come to you for that aid and support against the common foe which all Christians have a right to demand of each other, no matter how the forms of their Christianity may disagree.”

“The plea is one never disallowed by the men of Plymouth,” returned Bradford in his sonorous voice. “But what would you have us to do?”

“Why, to capture this Morton by force of arms, since words have no effect, and ship him back to England, where they say there is a warrant out against him for murder of some man in the west country with whom he had business concerns.”

“That were a high-handed proceeding, specially sith his settlement is not within the domain of Plymouth,” suggested the Elder cautiously.

“True,” broke in Bursley impetuously. “But as Master Blackstone has told you, Morton sells pieces and ammunition and rum to the savages without let or stint, and they, having naught else to do, practice at a mark all day long, and soon will prove better shots than any white man. Then, when some new Wituwamat or Pecksuot shall arise to stir them to revolt, where shall we be? You had not won so easy a triumph there where I live, Captain Standish, had your foes been armed with snaphances.”

“Not so easy, perhaps, but to my mind more honorable,” replied Standish coldly. “Howbeit, I do not approve of arming the Indians.”

“Of course, Governor,” resumed Blackstone, who had been the principal speaker, “the peril is not great for you who can count a hundred fighting men with Captain Standish to lead them; but none other of the settlements is of any force, although friend Maverick here has fortified his island, and may depend upon a dozen men or so of his household, and the Hilton brothers at Piscataqua and Cocheco are stout and well-armed fellows, and my neighbor Thomas Walford at Mishawum[2] has a palisado round his house, and his blacksmith’s sledge with some other weapons inside. Then at Naumkeag[3] are Roger Conant, Peter Palfrey, and the rest, with your old friend Lyford as their parson, and Conant is a fighting man as well as a godly one. But I, as all men know, am a man of peace as befits a parson; and there is David Thompson’s young widow and child abiding on the island bearing his name, with only a couple of men-servants to defend them. If all of us drew together in one hold we should not count half the force of Plymouth, but we do not wish so to abandon our plantations.”

“Have you labored with Thomas Morton, showing him the wrong he does?” asked Elder Brewster coldly, and eying the Churchman with strong disfavor, for Blackstone, with questionable taste, had chosen to wear upon this expedition the long coat and shovel hat carefully brought by him from England as the uniform of his profession. Dressed in these canonicals, with the incongruous addition of “Geneva bands,” Blackstone regularly read the Church of England service on Sundays at his house upon the Common, sometimes alone, and sometimes to a congregation composed of the Walfords from Charlestown, the Mavericks from Noddle’s Island or East Boston, the settlers from Chelsea, and perhaps in fine weather the Grays from Hull, and some of the folk from Old Spain in Weymouth. For all these were adherents to the Church of England after a fashion, although by no means ardent religionists of any sort; and as such, held in considerable esteem the eccentric parson living in the solitude he loved among his apple-trees, and beside his clear spring, now merged in the Frog Pond of our Common. A lukewarm Churchman, he was friendly enough to the Separatists, and now replied to Brewster with a smile,—

“I have labored so vainly, Elder, that I fear even your authority would be of no avail. I opine that our friend Standish here is the only man whose eloquence Thomas Morton will heed in the smallest degree.”

“And the chief men of all the settlements are agreed in making this request of Plymouth?” asked the governor.

“Not only the chief, but every man among them,” answered Maverick. “And what is more to the purpose, each one of the settlements will bear its share in whatsoever charges the arrest and transportation may involve.”

“That is well, but should be set down in writing with signatures and witnesses,” suggested Allerton, to whom Maverick haughtily replied,—

“Oh, never fear, Master Allerton. The most of us are honest men and not traders.”

“No offense, Master Maverick, no offense; but it is well that all things should be done decently and in order,” returned the assistant smoothly, and the council soon after broke up with the understanding that Bradford, as the only recognized authority in New England, should write Morton a formal protest in the name of all the English settlers, reminding him that King James of happy memory had, as one of his latest acts, issued a royal proclamation forbidding the sale of fire-arms or spirits to the savages, and calling upon him as an English subject to obey this edict.

If this protest proved of none effect, the Governor of Plymouth pledged himself to suppress the rebel and his mischief with the high hand.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Charlestown.

[3] Salem.

CHAPTER VIII.

STANDISH AT MERRY MOUNT.

Some two weeks had passed by since the visit of the committee of safety to Plymouth; long enough for Bradford, ever moderate, ever considerate, to write a letter of kindly expostulation to Morton, and to receive an insolent and defiant reply; and now in a pleasant June afternoon the Plymouth boat, commanded by Standish, and manned by eight picked followers, drew into Weymouth fore-river, where upon the water-course now known as Phillips Creek, Weston and his men, some six or seven years before, had founded their unlucky settlement.

The fate of this settlement we have seen, and also learned that the houses protected by Standish’s warning to the savages had since become the dwelling-place of some of the followers of Ferdinando Gorges, that showy personage who, coming to the New World with the romantic idea of proclaiming himself its governor, found it so savage and forbidding of aspect that, after a few months spent mostly as a guest of Plymouth, he quietly returned to England, civilization, and a sovereignty on paper. The houses repaired or built by him still remained, however, and among the Gorges men who continued to live in them were the Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Bursley who accompanied Blackstone and Maverick to Plymouth.

A little below Phillips Creek, the Monatoquit River empties into the bay, and across the river lies a fair height, now included in the town of Quincy, but then known as Passonagessit, whence one might then, and still may, look east and north upon the lovely archipelago of Boston Harbor, or westward to the blue hills of Milton. On its eastern face this height of Passonagessit sloped gently to the sea, with good harborage for boats at its foot, promising facilities for fishing and for traffic with the northern Indians.

Upon this headland in the early summer of 1625 a wild and motley crowd of adventurers pitched their tents, and soon replaced the canvas with comfortable log-houses and a stockaded inclosure. The leader of this company was one Captain Wollaston, perhaps the same adventurer whom Captain John Smith of Pocahontas memory encountered, some fifteen years before, on the high seas, acting as lieutenant to one Captain Barry, an English pirate. With Wollaston were three or four partners, and a great crew of bound servants, men who had either pledged their own time, or been delivered into temporary slavery as punishment by English magistrates, and the purpose of the leaders was to found a settlement like that of Plymouth. The place was named Mount Wollaston by the white men, while the Indians continued to call it Passonagessit, just as they still speak of Weymouth as Wessagusset. One New England winter, however, cooled the courage of Captain Wollaston, as it had that of Robert Gorges, and in the spring of 1626 he took about half his bound men to Virginia, where he sold their services to the tobacco planters at such a profit, that he wrote back to Mr. Rasdall, his second in command, to bring down another gang as soon as possible, and to leave Mount Wollaston in charge of Lieutenant Fitcher, until he himself should return thither.

Rasdall obeyed, and in making his parting charges to Fitcher remarked,—

“All should go well, so that you keep Thomas Morton in check. Give him his head and he will run away with you and Wollaston.”

Fitcher assented with a rueful countenance, for he knew himself to be but a timid rider, and the Morton a most unruly steed, and the event proved his fears well grounded, for Rasdall had not reached Virginia before Morton in the lieutenant’s temporary absence called the eight remaining servants together, produced some bottles of rum, a net of lemons, and a bucket of sugar, to which he bade his guests heartily welcome, greeting each man jovially by name, and telling them that the time had come to throw off their chains, to assert their rights, and to reap for themselves the benefit of their hard work. He assured them that he, although a gentleman, a learned lawyer, and a man of means, felt himself no whit above them, and asked nothing better than to live with them in liberty, fraternity, and equality, finally proposing that they should seize upon “the plant” of Mount Wollaston, turn Lieutenant Fitcher out of doors, and establish a commonwealth of their own. No sooner said than done! The men whom Morton addressed were, in fact, the dregs of the company left behind by Wollaston as not worth trading off. Perhaps he never intended to come back to claim them; perhaps if indeed he had been a pirate he took Morton’s action as nothing more than a reasonable proceeding; at any rate this disappearance of Captain Wollaston and Lieutenant Rasdall was final, and except that the neighborhood of Passonagessit is still called Wollaston Heights, the very name of this adventurer would probably have been forgotten.

It was at any rate disused, for so soon as Lieutenant Fitcher had been, as he reported to Bradford, “thrust out a dores,” the name of the place was changed to Merry Mount, and the life of debauch and profligacy promised by Morton inaugurated; as a natural consequence, Merry Mount soon acquired so wide a fame for license and disorder that it became the resort of the lawless adventurers who haunted the coast in those days, sometimes calling themselves fishermen, sometimes privateers, and sometimes buccaneers, and the whole affair grew to be a scandal, not only to Godfearing Plymouth, but to those other settlements, of sober, law-abiding folk, scattered up and down the coast, especially when in the spring of 1627 Morton set up a Maypole at Merry Mount, and proclaimed a Saturnalia of a week.

Now a Maypole, and dancing around it crowned with flowers, is in our day a very pretty and pastoral affair, only open to the objections of cold, wet, and absurdity. But in old English times it was a very different matter, being in effect a remnant of heathenesse, and the profligate worship of the goddess Flora. William Bradford, writing an account of the attack upon Merry Mount, expresses himself thus:—

“They allso set up a Maypole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days togeather, inviting the Indean women for their consorts, dancing and frisking togeather like so many fairies (or furies, rather) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived and celebrated the feastes of the Roman goddes Flora, or the beastly practices of the madd Bacchinalians.”

Although Plymouth and its neighbors were shocked at these practices, they would not probably have interfered, beyond a remonstrance, with the amusements of the Merry Mountaineers had the matter stopped there, but, as the delegates to Plymouth represented, the selling of fire-arms to the Indians, teaching them to shoot, and inflaming their murderous passions with alcohol, was a very different matter, a matter of public import, and one to be arrested by any means before it went farther.

So after this long digression, tiresome no doubt, but essential to understanding what follows, we come back to Myles Standish and his eight men, “first-comers” all of them, pulling up their boat upon the shore at Wessagusset, just as they had done five years before. As they turned toward the path leading to the stockade, a man came hurriedly down to meet them.

“Good-morrow, Master Bursley,” cried the captain cheerfully. “We are on our way to Merry Mount, and called to tell you so.”

But Bursley held up his hand with a warning gesture, and so soon as he was near enough hoarsely muttered in unconscious plagiarism,—

“The devil’s broke loose.”

“Say you so, Bill Bursley!” responded Standish, showing all his broad white teeth. “I did not know he’d ever been in the bilboes!”

“Morton’s here at the house, full of liquor and swearing all sorts of wicked intent toward—well now, Captain, if you won’t take it amiss, I’ll tell you that he calls you Captain Shrimp!”

“Following Master Oldhame,” replied Standish carelessly. “I must marvel at the lack of sound wit at Wessagusset when so small a jest has to serve so many men. But you say this roysterer is here in your house?”

“No, in Jeffries’ house. He came this morning asking that we should return with him to Merry Mount and help him against the ‘Plymouth insolents’ as he called you.”

“And what answer did he get, Master Bursley?”

“What but nay?” demanded Bursley with a glance of honest surprise. “Was not I one of those who came the other day to Plymouth begging Governor Bradford to take order with this rebel? But he has been drinking, and is in such a woundy bad humor that but now he drew a knife upon Jeffries, and may have slain him outright before this.”

“Say you so! Then, let us hasten and bury him with all due honors!” exclaimed the captain, in whose nostrils the breath of battle was ever a pleasant savor. “Howland, Alden, Browne, all of you, my merry men! Leave the boat snug, and follow to the house, to chat with Master Morton who awaits us there.”

And the captain sped joyously up the path, looking to the priming of his long pistols, and loosening Gideon in his scabbard as he went. A rod from the house, however, a bullet nearly found its billet in his brain, while on the threshold stood Morton, his face flushed, his gait unsteady, and a smoking pistol in his hand.

“Hola! Captain Shrimp, I warn you stand out of range of my pistol practice. You might get a hurt by chance!” cried he, raising another pistol, but before it could be aimed, or the captain take action, somebody within the house struck up the madman’s arm, and as he turned savagely upon this new foe, Standish, whose muscles were strong and elastic as a panther’s, sprang across the intervening space, and seizing his prisoner by the collar shouted,—

“Yield, Morton, or you’re but a dead man!”

“One man may well yield to a mob,” muttered Morton sullenly; and seeing that he was disarmed, Standish released his hold saying quietly,—

“Fair and softly, Master Morton! Governor Bradford sends me and these men, praying for your company at Plymouth, so soon as may be. If you will go quietly, well; but if you resist, you will go all the same; so choose you.”

“The Governor of Plymouth does me too much honor to send so many of his servants with the major-domo at the head,” replied Morton bitterly. “And sith as you say the invitation may not be refused, I’ll e’en accept it, but would first return to Merry Mount to fetch some clothes and set my house in order.”

“Your return to Merry Mount will be as the governor orders hereafter. I was bid to bring you to Plymouth without delay, and that I shall do.”

“But not to-night, I trust, Captain Standish,” interposed Jeffries. “A shrewd tempest is threatening, and by the time it is past, night will be upon us and no moon.”

“With the shoals and sandbars of this coast thick as plums in a Christmas pudding,” remarked Philip De la Noye, whereat Peter Browne growled, “Make it a Thanksgiving pudding, an it please you, Master Philip. We hold no Papist feasts here.”

Stepping outside the door, Standish took a survey of the skies, the sea, and the forest, already waving its green boughs in welcome to the coming rain.

“Do you hear the ‘calling of the sea,’ Captain?” asked a Cornish man, placing his curved hand behind his ear, and bending it to catch the deep murmur and wail that float shoreward from the hollow of ocean when a thunder-storm is gathering in its unknown spaces.

“Yes,” replied Standish in an unusually hushed voice, “we will stay awhile; perhaps the night, if our friends can keep us.”

“Glad and gayly,” said Jeffries, who, truth to tell, was a little afraid that the remaining garrison of Merry Mount might descend upon his house in the night to rescue their leader or avenge his loss.

“And we’ll feast you on the pair of wild turkeys my boy shot to-day,” cried Bursley. “Come, we’ll make a night on’t, sith there are not beds enough for all to lie down.”

“With your leave, sirs, I will claim one of those beds and take my rest while I may,” broke in Morton sourly. “I have no mind for reveling with tipstaves and jailers.”

“Ne’ertheless you might keep a civil tongue in your head, Morton,” angrily exclaimed Browne, but Standish interposed,—

“Tut, tut, man! Never jibe at a prisoner. A bruised creature ever solaces itself with its tongue, and so may a bruised man. Let him alone!”

“Thank you for nothing, Captain Shrimp!” snarled Morton; but Standish only nodded good-humoredly, and began looking about to see if the log hut could be made secure for the night. Finally, a small bedroom off the principal or living room was set aside for Morton, the window shutter nailed from the outside, and a man set to watch beside him, and be responsible for his safety.

The turkeys were soon plucked, dressed, and each hung by a string tied to one leg before a rousing fire, so oppressive for the June night, that Standish retreated to a shed at the back of the house, and stood watching the magnificent spectacle of the tempest now in full force. On one side lay the primeval forest, dense and gloomy with its evergreen growth, through whose serried ranks the mad wind ploughed like a charge of cavalry, rending the giants limb from limb, lashing the bowed heads of those who resisted, trampling down in its savage fury old and young, the sturdy veterans and the helpless saplings.

At the other hand lay the ocean, seen through a slant veil of hurtling rain, its waters flat and foaming like the head of a tigress that lays back her ears and gnashes her teeth as she crouches for her spring, and ever and anon, between the crashing peals of thunder and the splitting report of some lightning bolt riving the heart of oak or mast of pine, came the weird “calling of the sea,” the voice of deep crying unto deep:—

“Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye!” “But hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we shall have sealed the servants of our God!”

In face of this vast antiphony, Morton of Merry Mount and his concerns sank to insignificance; and so felt Myles Standish, who had all the love of nature inseparable from a great heart; but his had not been so great had it been capable of slighting the meanest duty, and his last act before midnight when he lay down for a few hours’ repose was to see that his prisoner was both safe and comfortable, and that two reliable men were upon the watch. One of these was Richard Soule and the other John Alden, to whom the captain said,—

“Now mind you, Jack, it has been a hard day’s work, and our friends’ hospitality full liberal. Do you feel your head heavy? If so, say the word, and I’ll watch myself and be none the worse for it on the morrow. Speak honest truth now, lad.”

But Alden so indignantly protested that nothing could tempt him to sleep in such an emergency, and so affectionately besought his friend to take some rest, that the captain at length complied, much to the delight of Morton, who, feigning sleep, had listened to the conversation.

Twelve o’clock, and one, and two passed quietly, yet not unnoted, for Morton, among other claims to distinction, was the possessor of a “pocket-clock,” the only one at Wessagusset that night, since even Standish did not aspire to such luxury, and was well content to divide his day by the sun and the dial, if it were clear, or by his instinct, if it were stormy, while the night was told by its stars, the deeper and lessening darkness, or the chill that always precedes the dawn. Half past two, and the prisoner turned himself silently upon his bed. At its foot sat John Alden, his snaphance between his knees, and his head fallen forward and sidewise till he seemed to be peering down its barrel; but alas, his stertorous breathing proclaimed that nature had succumbed to fatigue and the watchman was fast asleep.

A smile of elfish glee widened Morton’s already wide and loose-lipped mouth and twinkled in his beady eyes, as without a sound, and with the cautious movements of a cat, he stole off the bed, seized his doublet which had been laid aside, and crept out of the bedroom into the kitchen where, with his head and shoulders sprawling over the table, and his piece lying upon it, Richard Soule lay sweetly dreaming of seizing the rebel by the hair of his head, and dragging him to the foot of a gallows high as Haman’s. With the same malicious grin and the same cat-like movement Morton stole rapidly past this second Cerberus, pausing only to secure his snaphance. The outer door was made fast by an oaken bar dropped into iron staples, and this the runaway lightly lifted out and stood against the wall; but as he opened the door, the storm tore it from his hand, threw down the bar, extinguished the candles, and roused the sleepers.

Myles Standish, whose vigilant brain had warned him even through a heavy sleep that there was danger in the camp, was already afoot and groping for the ladder whereby to descend from his loft when the shriek of the wind and the bewildered outcries of the watch told him what had happened, and like a whirlwind he was down the steps, calling upon Alden and Soule, and loudly demanding news of their prisoner.

“He’s gone! He’s gone!” cried Soule, while Alden mutely bestirred himself with flint and steel to strike a light. When it was obtained, and disastrous certainty replaced the captain’s worst suspicions, his anger knew no bounds, and the hot temper, generally controlled, for once burst its limits and poured out a short, sharp torrent of words that had better never have been spoken, until at last John Alden, slowly roused to a state of wrath very foreign to his nature, retorted,—

“The next time that Nell Billington is brought before the court as a scold, it might be well to present Myles Standish along with her. What say you, Dick?”

“Haw! Haw!” roared Soule, who, although a worthy citizen, was not a man of fine sensibilities. Standish glanced at him with angry contempt, and then fixed his eyes upon Alden with a look before which that honest fellow shrunk, and colored fiery red as he stammered,—

“I—I said amiss—nay, then,—forgive me, Captain.”

“The captain can easily forgive what the friend will not soon forget, John,” said Standish gravely, for indeed the brief treason of his ancient henchman had struck deep into the proud, loving heart of the soldier. “But,” continued he in the same breath, “this is no time for private grievances—follow me!”

And opening the door he dashed out into the night, and down the path to the rude pier where his own boat and the two belonging to the settlement were made fast. As he approached, a figure slipped away, and was lost in the neighboring thicket; Myles could not see it, but surmised it, and quick as thought a rattling charge of buckshot followed the slight sound hardly to be distinguished amid the clashing of branches, the scream of the wind, and the sobbing blows of the surf upon the shore.

Morton, lying flat upon his face behind a big poplar, heard the shot fall around him, and knew that more would come; so, pursuing the tactics of his Indian allies, he wriggled backward, still clinging as closely as possible to mother earth, until, arrived at the roots of a giant oak, he drew himself upright behind it, and stood silent and waiting. The captain waited also, and in a moment came the green glare both men counted upon, and while Myles springing forward searched the thicket with another storm of shot and then with foot and sword, Morton, taking a rapid survey of the situation, selected his route, and sheltered by the crash of thunder which drowned all other sounds sprang from the oak to a clump of cedars higher up the hill, and so, guided by the lightning, and screened from the quick ear of his pursuer by the thunder, he gradually gained the trail made by the Indians between Wessagusset and the head waters of the tidal river Monatoquit; crossing this channel with infinite danger, the fugitive made his way down the other bank, and about daylight reached Merry Mount greatly to the astonishment of the only three of his comrades who remained at home, the rest of the garrison having gone under guidance of some of their Indian allies to trade for beaver in the interior.

Standish meanwhile, finding that the prisoner had made good his escape, returned to the house, and setting aside the condolences of his hosts and the shamefaced penitence of Richard Soule, for John Alden said never a word, he passed the remaining hours of darkness in examining his weapons, in pacing up and down his narrow quarters, gnawing his mustache, fondling the hilt of Gideon, and looking out of the door or the unglazed window-place. The hosts meantime bestirred themselves to prepare a savory meal of venison steaks, corn cakes, and mighty ale, to which, just as the first streaks of daylight appeared through the breaking clouds, the whole party sat down, the stern and silent captain among them, for angry and mortified though he was, the old soldier had served in too many rude campaigns not to secure his rations when and where they might be had. But the meal was very different from the jolly supper of the night before, and it was rather a relief when the captain rising briefly ordered,—

“Fall in, men! To the boat with you. Our thanks for your kind entertainment, Master Jeffries, and you, Master Bursley. We will let you know the ending of our enterprise so soon as may be.”

And as the sun rose across the sea, whose blue expanse dimpled and laughed at thought of its wild frolic during his absence, the Plymouth boat, crossing the mouth of the Monatoquit and skirting its marshy basin, drew in to the landing place of Merry Mount, not without expectation of a volley from some ambush near at hand. None such came, however, and so soon as the boat was secured, the captain, deploying his men in open order that a shot might harm no more than one, led them up the gentle slope and halted in the shelter of a clump of cedars, whose survivor stands to-day lifeless and broken, but yet a witness to the mad revels of Merry Mount and their sombre ending. His men safe, Standish himself advanced to parley with the garrison. As he emerged from the shelter of the grove Alden silently stepped behind, and would have followed, but the captain, without looking round, coldly said,—

“Remain here, Lieutenant Alden, until you are ordered forward,” and the young man slunk back just as a bullet whistled past the captain’s ear. Pulling his handkerchief from his pocket Standish thrust his bayonet through the corner, and holding it above his head, advanced until Morton’s voice shouted through a porthole beside the door,—

“Halt, there, Captain Shrimp! I’m on my own domain here, garrisoned, armed, victualed, and ready for a siege. What do you want, Shrimp?”

“I demand the body of Thomas Morton, and if the garrison of this place are wise, they will yield it up before it is taken by force of arms and their hold burned over their heads.”

A little silence ensued, for the threat of fire was a formidable one, and Morton’s three assistants had counted the enemy’s force as it landed, and were now clamoring for surrender. But he, who at least was no coward, retorted upon them with a grotesque oath that alone, if need be, he would chase these psalm-singers into the ocean, and returning to the porthole shouted again,—

“Hola! Captain, Captain Shrimp”—

“I hold no parley with one so ignorant of the uses of war as to insult a flag of truce,” interposed Standish, and Morton laughing boisterously rejoined,—

“I cry you mercy, noble sir, and will in future, that is to say, the near future, treat you with all the honor due to the Generalissimo of the Plymouth Army. And now deign, most puissant leader, to satisfy me as to the intent of the Governor of Plymouth should he gain possession of the body of Thomas Morton, that is to say of the living body, for should you see fit to carry him naught but a murdered carcass, well I wot he would hang it to the wall of his Fort upon the hill to keep company with the skull of Wituwamat. So again I demand—and I crave your pardon, most worshipful, if I am somewhat prolix; but indeed it is such a merry sight to watch your noble countenance waxing more and more rubicund and wrathful while I speak”—

“When I have counted ten I shall order the assault if I have no reasonable answer sooner,” interrupted Standish briefly. “One, two”—

“Hold, hold, man! Why so violent and rash? Tell me in a word what will Bradford do with me an I yield?”

“Send you to England for trial.”

“Trial on what count?” And as he asked the question Morton’s voice took on a new tone, one of anxiety and even alarm, for conscience was clamoring that a dark story of robbery and murder might have followed him from the western shores of Old England to the eastern coast of New. But Standish’s reply reassured him.

“For selling arms and ammunition to the Indians contrary to the king’s proclamation.”

“And what is a proclamation, Master General?” demanded the rebel truculently. “Mayhap you do not know that I, Thomas Morton, Gentleman, am a clerk learned in the law, a solicitor and barrister of Clifford’s Inn, London, and I assure you that a royal proclamation is not law, and its breach entails no penalty. Do you comprehend this subtlety, mine ancient? Suppose I have broken a proclamation of King James’s, what penalty have I incurred, if not that of the law?”

“The penalty of those who disobey and insult a king, whatever that may be,” sturdily replied Standish. “But all that”—

“Nay, nay; know you not, most valiant Generalissimo, that while a law entered upon the statute book of England remains in force until it is repealed, a royal proclamation dies with the monarch who utters it? King James’s proclamation sleeps with him at Westminster, and I never have heard that King Charles has uttered any.”

“Let it be so! I know naught and care less for these quips and quiddities of the law. The Standishes are not pettifoggers of Clifford’s nor any other Inn. My errand is to fetch you to Plymouth, and there has been more than enough delay already. Will you surrender peaceably?”

“Surrender! Why look you here, man, or rather take my word for it sith you may not look. My table is spread with dishes of powder, and bowls of shot, and flagons of Dutch courage; we are a goodly garrison, and armed to the teeth; we are behind walls, and could, if we willed, pick you off man by man without giving you the chance of a return shot. In fact, it is only my tenderness of human life that holds me back from greeting you as you deserve”—

“Enough, enough! I will wait here no longer to be the butt of your ribaldry. Before you can patter a prayer we will smoke you out of your hole like rats.”

And Myles was in fact retreating upon the body of his command when Morton hailed again,—

“Hold, hold, my valiant! I was about to say that I purpose surrender, both to save the effusion of human blood and to prevent damage to the house, which although no lordly castle serves our turn indifferently well as a shelter.”

“You surrender, do you?”

“On conditions, Captain. The garrison shall retain its colors and arms, and march out with all the honors”—

“Pshaw, man! I know as well as you that four of your men are away, and that there can be no more than three with you. As for conditions, it is our part to dictate them, and I hereby offer your men their freedom if they abandon the evil practices learned of their betters. For yourself I promise naught but safe convoy to Plymouth.”

“‘Perdition seize thee, ruthless’ Shrimp!” shouted Morton in a fury; “we will come out and drive you into the sea to feed the fishes.”

“Ay, come out as fast as you may, or you’ll be smoked out like so many wasps,” retorted Standish, tearing away his flag of truce, and waving his sword as signal for the advance of his little troop, four of whom carried blazing torches. But Morton, although he had stimulated his courage a little too freely, had not quite lost sight of that discretion which is valor’s better part, and absolutely sure that whatever Standish threatened he would fully perform, he resolved at all events to save his house; so seizing a handful of buckshot he crammed it into his already overloaded piece, called upon his men to follow, and flinging open the door rushed out shouting,—

“Death to Standish! Death! Death!” But the clumsy musket was too heavy for his inebriated grasp, and before he could bring it to an aim Standish sprang in, seized the barrel with one hand and Morton’s collar with the other, at the same time so twisting his right foot between the rebel’s legs as to bring him flat upon his back, while the blunderbuss harmlessly exploding supplied the din of battle.

“There, my lad, that’s a Lancashire fall,” cried Standish with an angry laugh. “They didn’t teach you that in Clifford’s Inn, did they now?”

“Oh, murder! murder! I’m but a dead man! Oh! Oh!” shrieked the voice of one of the besieged, and Standish turning sharply demanded,—

“Who gave the order to strike? Alden, how dare you attack without orders!”—

“I attacked nobody, Captain Standish,” replied John Alden more nearly in the same tone than he had ever addressed his beloved commander. “I carried my sword in my hand thus, and was making in to the house when this drunken fool stumbled out and ran his nose against the point. He’ll be none the worse for a little blood-letting.”

“Two of my fellows were drunk, and one an arrant coward, or you had not made so easy a venture of your piracy,” snarled Morton viciously, and one of the younger of the Plymouth men would have dealt him a blow with the flat of his sword, but Standish struck it up saying sternly,—

“Hands off, Philip De la Noye, or you’ll feel the edge instead of the flat of my sword. Know you nothing, nothing at all of the usages of war that you would strike an unarmed prisoner!”

A few moments more and the whole affair was over. Morton’s three men, foolish, worthless fellows, hardly dangerous even under his guidance, and perfectly harmless when deprived of it, were set at liberty with a stern warning from Standish that they were simply left at Merry Mount on probation, and that the smallest disobedience to the law prohibiting the sale of fire-arms, or instruction of the Indians in their use, would at once be known at Plymouth and most severely punished.

“As for your Maypole, and your Indian blowzabellas, and your dancing and mummery,” concluded the captain, “I for one have naught to say, except that there must be some warlock-work in the matter to tempt even a squaw to frisk round a Maypole with such as you.”

Morton, sullen, silent, and disarmed, was meantime led to the boat between Alden and Howland, the other men after, and last of all Standish muttering,—

“Better if there had been a garrison strong enough to hold the position. Then we might have burned the house and haply slain the traitor in hot blood.”

CHAPTER IX.

THE KYLOE COW.

“Barbara! Wife!”

“I am here, Myles, straining the milk. I shall make some furmety for supper. Even Lora begins to beg for it, and the boys dote upon it, little knaves!”

“Let the furmety wait for a bit, and come out here to see old Manomet in the evening light. ’Tis a sight I never tire of.”

“Ay, ’tis very fair,” replied Barbara coldly, as she came and sat for a moment upon the bench at the cottage door, where Myles was wont to smoke his pipe, and muse upon many matters never brought to words.

A little lower down the hill Alick and his brother Myles were playing with John and Joseph Alden, while Betty, a stick in her hand, drove all four boys before her, she with mimic airs of anger and they of terror.

“Very fair!” echoed the captain irritably. “You know naught and care less for Nature, Bab. Your thought never gets beyond your furmety pot or Alick’s breeches.”

“And that’s all the better for you and Alick, Myles,” replied the wife in her usual placid tones; but then, with one of those sudden revulsions by which placid people occasionally surprise their friends, she drew in her breath with something between a sob and a groan and burst out:

“Oh, Myles! Myles! Nature do you call it, and I not love the face of Nature do you say! Nay, man, this is not Nature, these dark woods and barren sands and lonesome hills, with never a chimney in sight,—that’s not the Nature I love and long for. My heart goes back to the pleasant fields and good old hills of Man. There are mountains grander by far than yon dark Manomet, as you call it, and yet pranked all over with cottages, where honest folk find a home and the stranger is ever welcome. And then the fair valleys between, with the peaceful steads where men are born and die in sight of their fathers’ graves, and the old thatched roofs, and the stonecrop on the walls, and the roses clambering over the casements, and oh, the little kyloe cows coming home at night, and the poultry”—

She paused abruptly and threw her apron over her face. Myles carefully knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid it upon a ledge above the bench, and taking his wife by the arm led her into the house where he might seat her upon his knee with no risk of scandalizing chance spectators. Then he calmly said,—

“The worst of quiet creatures like you, Bab, is that a man never knows the fire’s alight till the house is in a blaze. Now as you, or was it Priscilla Alden, said once of me, ‘A little pot’s soon hot,’ and all the world is forced to know it, but you,—art homesick for the old country, lass?”

“Nay, Myles, there is no home to be sick for; all is changed there; but I would like it better if we had a little holding of our own, and our own cow, and some ducks, and a goose fattening for Michaelmas.”

“But you share the great red cow with Winslow’s folk, and have milk enough for your furmety, sweetheart!” And the grim warrior smiled as tenderly as a mother upon the flushed wet face so near his own. Barbara smiled too, and wiping away the tears sat upright, but was not allowed to leave her somewhat undignified position upon her husband’s knee.

“There, Myles, ’tis past now, and I will be more sensible”—

“Prythee don’t, child! I like thee better thus.”

“Nay, but we’re growing old folk, goodman, and it behooves us to be sober and recollected”—

“Nonsense, nonsense, Bab; there’s no lass among them all that shows so fair a rose upon her cheek, or such a wealth of sunny hair, as my Bab, and as for thine eyes, lass, they are a marvel”—

“Now! now! now! well then, dear, I’ll behave myself, after all that sweet flattery, and—come, let us go out and look at Manomet.”

“Nay. Your longing for a place you may call your own, and have your kine and poultry and all that about you, marries so well with a thought I’ve been turning over and over in my mind for a month or more, that I’ll e’en give it you now, and Manomet and the furmety may wait another ten minutes, or so.”

“Well, then, let me but take my knitting”—

“No. You shall do naught but listen, and you shall sit where you are! For once I’ll have your whole mind”—

“For once, Myles!”

“Ay, for once,—look as grieved as you may out of those eyen of yours! Well enough do you know that Alick, and little Myles, and now Mistress Lora have well-nigh pushed their poor old dad out of their mother’s heart”—

“Myles! Dost really think it, love?”

The captain held his wife as far from him as her seat upon his knee would allow, and eagerly read her fair troubled face, her tender blushes, quivering lips, and lovely, loving eyes, where the tears stood and yet were restrained from falling—read and read as men devour with incredulous eyes some voucher of almost incredible good fortune. Then he slowly said,—

“Truly God has been very good to me, my wife. His name be praised.”

It was a rare aspiration from those bearded lips, not innocent of the strange oaths and fierce objurgation well known to the soldiery of that day,—‘our army in Flanders,’—and over Barbara’s face came a look of such joy and peace as transformed its quiet comeliness to true beauty. But it was she who with woman’s tact dropped a veil over that moment’s exaltation before it should degenerate into commonplace.

“What is your plan, dear?” asked she, and her husband, with a half-conscious feeling of relief, drew a long breath, and said,—

“Oh—yes. Well, Bab, I, as well as you, would be content to live a little farther from some of our townsfolk; it is not here as it was at first, or even when you came. Then we were all of one mind and one interest, and if I could not belong to their church as they call it, at least I respected their beliefs, and they let mine alone. But now, amid all this bickering with Lyford and Oldhame”—

“But Oldhame has gone, and so has Lyford, and are forbidden to come hither again,” interposed Barbara, and her husband slowly and dubiously replied, “I know, Bab, I know; but for all that somewhat of ill feeling in the town has grown out of that affair, and though there’s no man on God’s earth so near to me as William Bradford, and none I reverence more than the Elder, or had rather smoke a pipe with than Surgeon Fuller, there are others that are to my temper like a red rag to a bull, and it’s safer all round that we should not day by day be forced to rub shoulders. So the long and short on’t is, Bab, for I’m not good at speechifying, it needs Winslow for that, I have spoken to Bradford about taking possession of that sightly hill across the bay”—

“The one you fired a cannon at, the other day?” interrupted Barbara slyly.

“Yes—that is, you goose, I fired toward it, just to see how far the saker would carry.”

“Nay, I think it was a sort of salute you were giving to some fancy of your own, Myles, anent that hill.”

“Well, then, since you will have me make myself out no older than Alick, I had been marking how the headland stood up against the gold of the western sky, and it minded me so of Birkenclyffe at Duxbury, and of my boyhood at Chorley and Wigan, and of fair days gone by”—

He paused, and Barbara knew that his thought was of Rose, the sweet blossom of his youth, Rose, whom he had carried in his pride to the neighborhood of the stately domain that ought to have been his and hers, and spent there with her almost the only idle month of his life. She knew, and her heart contracted with a slow, miserable pang, but she only said,—

“Yes, it does look like Birkenclyffe. And you think you could be happy in living there, Myles?”

“Happy!” echoed the soldier moodily. “I should be happy if the wars would break out afresh, and Gideon and I might hear once more the music that we love. We rust here, we two.”

“But the children, Myles! The boys so like their father, and Lora—would you have them orphans, and me”—

“Ah, Lora! I did not tell you when I came home from England, wife, for I did not want to hear any jibes and gainsaying”—

“Oh, Myles, do I jibe at you?”

“Well, no,—no Bab, not jibes; but you know, lass, we never were quite of a mind about the Standish dignities”—

“Dear heart, we have left all that behind us in the Old World! Here we Standishes have dignity and observance in full measure, because we belong to thee, love. Captain Standish, head of the colony’s strong men, is the founder of a new race in this New World.”

“Nay, nay, Barbara, you talk but as a woman, and you never did rise up to the lawful pride of your birth”—

And the captain all unconsciously put his wife off his knee, and rising, strode up and down the room, tugging at his red beard, and frowning portentously. Barbara, her hands folded in her lap, and a sad smile upon her lips, sat watching him.

“It is as well to tell you now as to keep it for years,” broke out the captain suddenly. “Nothing will change it, that is, nothing but Alexander’s death”—

“Alexander’s death! Not our boy, Myles!”

“No, no, no, child! Alexander, son of my cousin Ralph Standish of Standish Hall. When I was in England I went to see him as I told you.”

“Yes, dear.”

“I went to enforce upon him, newly come to the estates, my just and honest claim to my grandfather’s inheritance which Ralph’s grandfather juggled out of the orphan boy’s hands, and which they have kept ever since.”

“I supposed that was your errand, but as I saw naught had come of it I asked you no questions, Myles.”

“And therein showed yourself the kindly sensible woman you ever were, wife. But there is more to the matter. Ralph is an honest fellow, and after some days of looking into the matter he confessed the justice of my claim. I tell you, Bab, we went through those old parchments like two weasels from the Inns of Court; Morton of Clifford’s could have been no subtler; we had out the old deeds from the muniment-room, and sent to Chorley Church for the registry book, where are set down the marriage of my father and mother and my own birth and baptism; and I showed him Queen Bess’s commission to her well-beloved Myles Standish, born on that same date, and at the last, over a good pottle of sack, he confessed to me that I was in the right, but added, with a smile too sly for a Standish to wear, that I should find it well-nigh impossible to prove the matter at law, for, as he was not ashamed to say to my beard, neither he nor his lawyers would help me, and he knew, though he had the decency not to say it, I have no money to tickle the palms of the judges, the commissioners, the court officials, and the Lord Harry alone knows who they are, but all too many for me.”

“Then your cousin is a knave and a robber!”

“Nay, nay, Bab! Nay, I know not that one could expect a man to strip himself of half his estate if the law bade him keep it”—

“You would, Myles.”

“Ah, well, I was ever a thriftless loon, with no trader’s blood in my veins to show me how to keep or to get money. Ralph’s grandmother was fathered by a man who made his money in commerce.”

And the captain smiled as one well content with his own chivalrous incapacity, then hastily went on. “But though Ralph would not give me mine own, nor even let me take it if I tried, he had an offer to make on his part. His oldest son, Alexander by name, was then an infant of two years, a sturdy little knave already scorning his petticoats, and Ralph proposed that we should solemnly betroth him then and there to our Lora”—

“But Lora was not born when you were in England five years ago, Myles.”

“No; but I knew that our two little lads must in course of time have a sister, and counted on her. Truth to tell, Barbara, Ralph and I picked a name for her off the family tree. Lora.”

“If I had known it, the child never should have borne the name, and if I could I would change it now!”

And Barbara, seriously angry, rose from her chair and would have left the room, but her husband detained her.

“There, look you, now! I knew you would take it amiss, and told Ralph so, and he bade me keep it to myself, at all odds till the girl was born and named, and so I have. And yet I do not see what angers you so, Barbara, except that you ever favored your mother’s family, and held your Standish blood too cheap.”

“That quarrel well-nigh parted us ere ever we came together, Myles. Haply it had been better if we had been content to rest simply cousins and never married.”

“Commend me to a good woman for thrusts both deep and sure when once she is angered,” cried Myles, flinging out of the house and up the hill to his den in the Fort.

But when Alick and Betty Alden raced each other thither to tell him that supper was ready, the choleric captain had fully recovered his temper, and found his wife so placid and quietly cheerful that he supposed she also had both forgiven and forgotten.

Which shows that the great Captain of Plymouth understood the strategy of battle better than that of a woman’s heart. Nor did he ever note, that from that day Barbara never spoke her daughter’s name if it could possibly be avoided, calling her generally “my little maid,” and as the child grew, addressing her as May, the sweet old English contraction of maiden.

A few weeks later, as Barbara set the stirabout that sometimes served instead of furmety upon the table, her husband entered, and throwing his hat into Lora’s lap said in a tone of well deserving,—

“There, Bab, I’ve bought out Winslow’s share in the red cow for five pounds and ten shillings, to be paid in corn, and I’ve satisfied Pierce and Clark for their shares with a ewe lamb apiece, so now it is mine, and I give it to you. She’s not the kyloe cow you were longing for, but she’s your own.”

“Thank you, Myles,” replied Barbara, flushing with pleasure. “And is it quite settled that we are to go over to the Captain’s Hill as they begin to call it?”

“Duxbury, I mean to call it in due time. Yes, dame, the men and I are going over to-morrow morning to fell timber, and you shall have some sort of shelter of your own over there before you’re a month older.”

CHAPTER X.

THE UNEXPECTED.

It was just as true in 1625 as it will be in 1895 that nothing is certain to occur except the unexpected; but the idea had not yet been phrased, and even if it had been, William Bradford’s turn of mind was absolutely opposed to the epigrammatic, so it was in sober commonplace that he remarked,—

“I never thought to have spoken with you again in Plymouth, Master Oldhame, but sith you urge pressing business as your excuse for coming hither, I am ready to hear it.”

The governor sat in his chair of office, and the Assistants were ranged each man in his place. At the end of the platform stood John Oldhame, and behind him Bartholomew Allerton and Gyles Hopkins, each carrying a pike, and looking very important.

But except for these nine men the great chamber where we assisted at the Court of the People was empty, and the sad afternoon light fell across the vacant benches, and glimmered upon the low-browed wall upheld by sturdy knees of oak, with a sort of mournful curiosity quite pathetic; this curiosity was, however, reflected in the minds of the townsfolk of Plymouth in a degree far more ludicrous than pathetic, man often falling short of the dignity of nature.

All that they knew, these good people, was that about noon a Nantasket boat had rounded Beach Point, anchored in the channel, and sent a skiff ashore under command of William Gray, the elder of two brothers, representing the solid men of Nantasket at that day. Stepping on the Rock, Master Gray demanded to be led to the governor, a demand complied with the more readily that as he declined to communicate his business to any one else. Dinner-time came and went, and as the town returned to its posts of observation it noted William Gray rowing back to the vessel, receiving a passenger into his skiff, and bringing ashore the very John Oldhame whom Plymouth had so ignominiously dismissed some two years before. The same, and yet a very different John Oldhame from the drunken ruffler of that day, or the blustering bully who a year before that had been solemnly exiled from Plymouth; yes, a strangely meek and quiet John Oldhame this, who, looking neither to the right nor the left, strode up the hill to the Fort, apparently not noticing, certainly not resenting, the attendance of the two men-at-arms who escorted or guarded him, as one might elect to call it.

So much had Plymouth seen, and Helena Billington, arms akimbo, and head inclined to one side, was beginning to vituperate the tyrants who had beguiled an unfortunate gentleman into their clutches, and now would clap him up in jail, when those very tyrants severally appeared coming out of their houses and leisurely climbing the hill.

“The governor, and the Elder, and the captain, and the doctor, and Master Winslow, and Master Allerton,” counted she breathlessly, and not without a certain awe at sight of all the authority of the colony paraded before her eyes; and as the last doublet disappeared within the gate, she sagely shook her head, with the conclusion, “Well, gossip, it passeth my comprehension or thine, and I’ll e’en hie me under cover when it rains, for only a fool will stay out to get drenched.”

From which somewhat blind apothegm we may perhaps evolve the theory that Goodwife Billington was not one of those whom our modern slang declares “don’t know enough to go in when it rains!”

“Seat yourself an you will, Master Oldhame, and speak your errand,” repeated the governor a little more indulgently, for in fact Oldhame’s weather-and-timeworn face and somewhat bowed shoulders suggested ill health or great suffering, a look supplemented by his voice, as dropping upon the bench which young Allerton pushed forward he slowly said,—

“My thanks, Governor Bradford. I have come here to-day upon an errand so strange that I can scarce credit it myself, and I know not that in my half century of years I have ever charged myself with the like.

“Man, it is to crave pardon for my ill offices to you, and these your associates, and to all the town of Plymouth, where I repaid kind entertainment and many good turns with as much of evil and malevolence. Can you, as Christian men, forgive me?”

“As Christians,” began Bradford, after a pause of unfeigned astonishment, “we are bound to forgive injuries greater than those you have offered us, which indeed did not harm us as you intended. But as prudent men, we would fain know before receiving you again to our confidence what are the grounds of your repentance.”

“Right enough, Master Bradford, right enough! It behooves every man to be prudent, and the burned dog dreads the fire. But the matter is here. A year or more agone I and other men loaded a small ship with goods, bought mainly on credit from the French and English vessels at Monhegan and Damaris Cove, to truck them at the Virginia colony for tobacco and other matters which sell well to the sailors and fishermen; but outside the Cape here, we fell upon Malabar and Tucker’s Terror, and all those fearsome shoals and reefs that drove back your own Mayflower from the same voyage, and to cap our misfortunes a shrewd storm out of the northeast seized us at advantage, and shook and worried us as you may see a dog torment a wolf caught in a trap, and sans power to defend himself.

“Now in that extremity some of the mariners bethought them of God, who verily was not in all their thoughts, and so fell on prayer, making loud lamentations of their sins and professing desire of amendment and satisfaction. So as I listened, and marveled if those men were verily worse than other men, or than me, of a sudden a flash as of lightning pierced my soul and showed me mine own enormous wickedness, and how it well might be that I was the Jonah for whom an angry God would slay all this company. Natheless I did not cry out as Jonah did, for I knew not if there was a great fish prepared to swallow me when my shipmates should fling me over, nor did I feel within myself the prophet’s constancy and courage to abide three days alive in a fish’s belly; so I held mine own counsel, and getting behind the mast I fell upon my knees and heartily abased myself before God, confessing my sins, and most especially my ill-doing toward you men of Plymouth, and as the heat of my devotion bore me on, I vowed that so God would spare me alive, and not make shipwreck of all this company for my sin, I would humble myself before those I had wronged, and would, if I might, do them as much good as I had done harm. Then, sirs, believe it or not as you will, but as I finished that prayer and made that vow, the wind fell, as though some mighty hand had gathered it back, and held it powerless; the ship that had lain all but upon her beam-ends, and in another moment must have capsized, righted herself, and stood amazed and quivering, like a horse curbed in upon the very brink of a precipice; the sea still ran high, but the tide so bore us up, and carried us so kindly, that two men at the helm could manage it again, and the master, recovering his spirit that had been well-nigh dashed with the imminent peril of his occasions, so ingeniously manœuvred his course in and out among those sholds as to fetch us through into the open sea, although so crippled and battered that we could no more than make back to Gloucester for repairs.

“There I found another vessel bound south, and took passage with my venture, secure that now my voyage should be prospered as indeed it was, and I stayed in Virginia something over a year, trading and laying by money.

“And now, masters, here I am in fulfilling of my vow. I have, and I do crave pardon and forgetfulness of my former wrong-doing, and to prove that my repentance is fruitful, I here bring you in solid cash for the use of the colony five-and-twenty rose-nobles, good money, honestly gained.”

And with a smile of self-approval not unmixed with surprise at his own position, Oldhame brought a grimy canvas bag from the depths of one of the pockets of his pea-coat, and planted it with a pleasant thud and jingle upon the table in front of the governor, who raised his hand as if to push it back, but restrained the gesture, and after a moment’s hesitation rose, and taking the penitent by the hand said in his grandly simple way,—

“No man can do more than to confess himself sorry for wrong-doing, and to offer satisfaction for sin. Zaccheus did no more, and the Son of God became his guest. Master Oldhame, we receive you again as our friend and comrade, and make you welcome to our town whensoever you may see fit to visit us. As for this money, if you will retire for a little, I will take counsel with my advisers here, and tell you our mind. Will you walk about the town, or will you await our summons outside? Bartholomew, Master Oldhame is no longer a prisoner but a guest; go with him where he will, and Gyles, wait you without to summon him, when we are ready.”

But Oldhame went no farther than a sunny angle of the Fort, where, seated upon the section of a tree-trunk set there by Captain Standish, he lighted his pipe, folded his arms, and fixing his eyes upon Captain’s Hill sat smoking in stolid silence, rather to the disappointment of Bart Allerton, who was a sociable young man, and would have liked the news from Virginia.

The penitent’s mood had changed, however, and he was suffering from the reaction consequent upon most unwonted acts of self-sacrifice. He really was sincere in his contrition, and had honestly offered that bag of gold as satisfaction for the injury done and intended toward Plymouth. But five-and-twenty rose-nobles, representing more than forty dollars of our money, meant in that day and place four or five times as much, and was a sum neither lightly won, nor lightly to be spent; so that Oldhame half unconsciously fell to meditating how far it would have gone toward purchasing English goods for another voyage to Virginia, or for his own maintenance while resting from his labors. He had told his story, and made his peace-offering in a moment of exaltation, and now the exaltation was all gone, and a certain flat and disgusted mood had seized upon its vacant place. Human nature is not essentially different in the nineteenth nor will be in the twentieth century from what it was in the seventeenth.

“The governor prays your company, Master Oldhame,” announced Gyles Hopkins; and knocking the ashes out of his pipe, Oldhame pocketed it and followed into that dusky chamber, where still the Court of the People seemed to fill the benches with ghostly presence waiting to hear and confirm their governor’s decision.

“We pray you be seated, Master Oldhame,” began Bradford, motioning to a chair beside the table. “Bartholomew and Gyles you are dismissed, and see that we are not interrupted.”

He paused while the men-at-arms withdrew, closing the door with a heavy bang, which echoed gloomily through the empty room.

Then Bradford, referring now and again to his associates, told the grisly penitent that the opportunity he craved of doing a good turn to Plymouth was at hand, and the money he proffered would aid in carrying out the enterprise. This was no other than the transportation of Thomas Morton to England, and there delivering him to the authorities who waited to punish him for offenses committed before seeking the shelter of the New World. After his capture by Standish, Morton had been brought to Plymouth, but as he was too troublesome a prisoner to be held there, some brilliant mind had hit upon the idea of marooning him upon one of the Isles of Shoals, where, having no boat, he was perfectly sure to be found when wanted, and at the same time quite out of danger. The season for the return home of the English fishing-vessels had now arrived, and Plymouth was already in treaty with the master of the Dolphin to carry their rebellious prisoner as passenger; but it was most desirable that some competent person should accompany him, and perhaps none could be found more suitable than Oldhame, to whom the position was now offered. If he chose to accept it, the five-and-twenty rose-nobles, “said to be contained in this bag which we have not opened,” and at the words Bradford laid a hand upon the bag and threw a penetrating glance at Oldhame, whose face flushed guiltily, for one of those nobles had indeed been so grievously clipped as to lose a good third of its value, and he knew it, although the governor only guessed it, “this money, be it less or more, shall be used by you, Master Oldhame, to pay Plymouth’s proportion of the expense of this transportation, and the remainder shall be our recognition of your services and loss of time. Do you accept the offer, friend?”

“Gladly and gayly, Governor, and gentlemen all,” cried Oldhame, laying an impulsive clutch upon the bag. “And truth to tell, I was purposing a voyage into England when occasion should serve, so that your proposal jumps with my desires most marvelously, and you shall find that once there I will do you good and manful service in whatsoever you desire. I am not unknown to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the Governor of Old Plymouth, whither the Dolphin is bound, and I will so present this Morton’s offenses that we shall have him hanged over the battlements, a prey for gleeds, before he has well tasted English air.”

“Better to shoot him before he goes,” growled Standish. “’Tis bad venerie when you have trapped a wolf to let him go free on the chance some other man will finish your work.”

“Morton hath committed no offense worthy of death on this side the water,” suggested Allerton in his crafty voice. “If he hath in England, let English law decide.”

Standish cast a look of impatient dislike at the speaker, but Doctor Fuller interposed,—

“Fair and softly is a good rule whereby to walk, and I know not if the right of life and death except in combat is fairly ours. I fear me one hundred men though led by Standish would hardly cope with Old England’s forces if she sent them hither.”

“My brethren,” said Bradford, lightly tapping the table with his finger-tips, “why waste time thus? There is no question of life or death in the present matter; we are to send this dangerous rebel home to England for trial, and John Oldhame is to be surety for his safe arrival, and to receive this money to defray Plymouth’s proportion of the expense. Am I right, sirs?”

“You are right, Governor Bradford,” said the Elder solemnly, and the conclave broke up.

CHAPTER XI.

GOVERNOR BRADFORD PAYS A VISIT.

“Now mind you, goodman, you are to put on your ruff, and the goodly wrist-ruffles, and see that your doublet is fresh brushed, and your hosen tight and smooth, and your hair well set up, and your beard newly combed,—I wish I might but put a thought of ambergris and civet upon it”—

“Nay, dame, not while I live, and I think when once you have killed me with kindness you’ll have no heart to send me to the grave smelling like a civet cat”—

“Oh, Will, Will! How can you!”—

“How can I die, or how can I forbear civet upon my beard? Nay, then, my dame! Wilt cry over it—there, then, sweetheart, there, there!”—

“’Twas that you talked of dying, Will, and if thou wert dead”—

“Men who talk of dying never die, Elsie; but take courage, take courage, and for thy sweet sake I’ll don the ruffles, and brush my doublet, and re-garter my hosen, and set up my hair; nay, then, I’ll even clean my shoes and anoint them afresh, which is more than you bade me do.”

“Why certainly, of course you must do that, dear; and, laugh at your poor wife as you will, I’m sure enough you’ll pleasure her by going brave, and showing a good front to these fine new-comers; and if you come to see Lady Arbella Johnson be sure to mark all the items of her clothes, for she will have the latest modes out of England.”

“Oh, wife, wife! Oh, woman, woman! ’Twas but yesterday we were driven to make coats of deer-skins, and shoe ourselves with the hides of wolves and bears, because we had no other clothing, and to-day you are all agog for the latest modes out of England, and send me to take inventory of a titled lady’s raiment that you may copy her silks in kersey, and her velvets in homespun.”

“Nay, then, sir, I’m none so poor as you would make me out, but have more than one robe of say of mine own, only they have never been aired in this rude wilderness, and are a thought antiquated. But now that we hear of Governor Endicott of Salem, and Governor Winthrop of the Bay, I mind me that I am wife of Governor Bradford of Plymouth, and it is my duty, my bounden duty, Will, to magnify thine office, and show myself abroad as a governor’s lady should.”

“Ay, dame; but methinks the wife of a governor should show herself more governed than other women; more meek, and recollected, and chastened, rather than more arrogant.”

“Nay, Will, do I lack in these matters?” And Alice looked up in her husband’s face, her blue eyes so swimming in tears that she could not see the smile of tender malice upon her husband’s lips as he folded her in his arms and whispered tender reassurances needless to set down.

Yes, our governor was going a-neighboring to his brother potentates at Boston, for a great change had almost suddenly befallen that pleasant region where William Blackstone had dwelt as a solitary for so long. Let us, as briefly as may be, freshen our memories of these early arrivals, and so understand more clearly the new relations suddenly involving the Pilgrims of Plymouth.

It was in 1628 that Governor Endicott with a large and aristocratic following arrived at Naumkeag, and speedily dispossessed Roger Conant and the other old settlers both of their proprietary rights and their privilege of trading with the natives. The next step was to name the place Salem, and ordain as Independent ministers the men who had left England proclaiming their fealty to her Established Church.

But Salem did not long claim the seat of government, for on the 17th of June, 1630, Governor Winthrop, with near a thousand colonists under his command, sailed into Boston Bay and landed at Charlestown, where a deputation from Salem had already prepared for them. Neither numbers, nor home protection, nor wealth, nor aristocratic pretensions could, however, save this great colony from the very same enemies that had assailed the glorious hundred of Mayflower Pilgrims ten years before, and cut down one half of their number. Ship fever, scurvy, and other diseases incident to the horrors of a sea-voyage in that day seized upon the new-comers, who aggravated their own danger by improper food, treatment, and, so long as they lasted, terrible drugs. In six months Charlestown had become a village of graves and of loathsome insanitation, complicated with the want of pure and sufficient water. Moved at length by the sufferings of his neighbors, Blackstone, who at first had scowled upon their invasion of his solitude, visited Governor Winthrop, and told him of a pure and unfailing spring of water near the southern foot of the hill upon whose western slope lay his own cabin and apple orchard, and suggested that it might be well for the settlement to be removed across the mouth of the Mystic, and reëstablished at Trimountain, as he called the peninsula hitherto his own.

Winthrop gladly accepted the suggestion, came over with Blackstone to view the proposed site, and liked it so well that in October, 1630, he caused the frame of his own house nearly ready for erection in Charlestown to be taken over, and set up close by the spring in question, or, as we might now describe it, on Washington Street, between the Old South Church and the corner of Spring Lane, under whose worn and dusty pavement one still fancies to hear the cool wash and gurgle of those imprisoned waters.

Was Blackstone sorry for his good-nature when, after a little, Winthrop and his council kindly set apart fifty acres of the domain to which he had invited them, as his property, and proceeded to divide the rest among themselves? Cannot one picture the reserved and somewhat cynical hermit smoking his pipe beside his solitary fire in the evening of that day, and smiling to himself as he considered the condescension of the new government? And did haply some herald of coming Liberty suggest certain pithy queries to be more plainly worded on Boston Common a century or so later? Did the lonely man ask himself what right Governor Winthrop or any other man had to come into this wild country and dispossess the pioneer settlers of their holdings? True, the King of England had given him that right. But where did the King of England himself get the authority to do so? He had neither bought the land of the natives, nor had he conquered them in fair fight; he simply had heard of a fair new world beyond the seas, and claimed it for his own by some arbitrary right divine whose source no man could tell. The land was his, he said, and so he had sent these men in his name to take possession, to parcel out, to give, or to withhold, from men as good as themselves who had borne the heat and toil of the earlier days, and who had paid the savages full measure for the lands they held. What was this right divine? Why should kings so control the property of other men—men who only asked to live their own lives, and neither meddle nor make with kingcraft? Why? And as William Blackstone, the forgotten pipe burned out, pondered this “why,” the yellowing leaves of the young Liberty tree a few rods from his cottage door rustled impatiently, as though they felt the breath of 1775 already in their midst.

It did not last very long. Not only were there disputes and heartburnings about proprietorship, but the Puritans who had come to New England professing a stanch adherence to the church, and almost immediately proved false to her, could not forgive the quiet man who made no parade of religion, but never swerved from his adherence to his ordination vows. They tried to persuade him, they tried to coerce him, and at last received the assurance that he who had exiled himself from England to avoid the tyranny of the Lords Bishops was not disposed to submit to that of the lords brethren, but would leave them to dispute with each other.

So selling all that he had, except a plot of land around his old home, Blackstone invested the thirty pounds of purchase money in cattle, packed his books and some other matters upon his cows’ backs, and driving the herd before him passed over Boston Neck and out into the wilderness; nor did he pause until upon a tributary of Narragansett Bay he found a lonely and lovely spot, so far from white men or their ordinary line of travel as to rival the Isle of Juan Fernandez in solitude. Naming his domain Study Hill, Blackstone built another house, planted some young apple trees carefully brought from the old orchard, set up his bookshelves, filled his pipe, and settled himself for forty years of happiness, dying just in time to escape King Philip’s war.

But in September, 1630, when Governor Bradford went up to pay his first visit to Governor Winthrop, Blackstone still lived on Boston Common, and looked upon the new-comers as his guests. They had not yet presented him with the fifty acres of his own land.

With the Governor of Plymouth came Elder Brewster, and Captain Standish, Thomas Prence, and Doctor Fuller, who was already well and gratefully known by many of the new settlers; for when the pestilence broke out in Salem about a year before, Governor Endicott dispatched Roger Conant to beg, in the name of Christian fellowship, that the doctor of Plymouth, who had already met the grim enemy at home, would come and aid his brethren. Fuller was not slow to respond, and not only cured some of the sufferers in spite of the deadly methods of his day, but so set forth the religious beliefs and practices of the church of the Pilgrims that Endicott, who was still a Puritan Churchman, and soon to be a Puritan Independent, wrote a cordial letter to Bradford, telling how glad he was to find that the Separatists were not so bad as he had supposed them to be.

Again, when in the summer of 1630 the settlers at Charlestown, Boston, Dorchester, and the neighboring country fell into the same disaster, and with the earliest victims lost Doctor Gager their only physician, Plymouth was appealed to for assistance, and Doctor Fuller at once responded. But the scanty stock of drugs brought by the emigrants was already exhausted, and Fuller’s own supply soon went, so that his treatment was principally confined to blood-letting, and after writing a homesick letter to his brother-in-law Bradford, he returned to Plymouth.

At the wooden wharf where the Pilgrims disembarked in Charlestown, they were met by Governor Winthrop, Dudley his Deputy and successor, and the Reverend Master Wilson, who, as he cordially grasped Elder Brewster by the hand, cast a hurried glance over the group of visitors, and felt a sensible relief at not perceiving the face of Ralph Smith among them. For this reverend gentleman, persecuted out of Salem for opinion’s sake, and refused shelter in Boston or Charlestown, had found an asylum among the liberal Pilgrims who presently invited him to the position of their first ordained minister.

Mr. Wilson need not, however, have been alarmed, since Bradford, whose character singularly united the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of the dove, had not thought best to include a person so likely to be unwelcome to his hosts in this visit, at once friendly and official; for the Governor of Plymouth had been invited to assist at the first formal session of the Bay authorities, convened at the Great House built by Thomas Grove, the architect “entertained” by the Massachusetts Company under whose auspices the new colony came out.

To this inauguration feast came also Governor Endicott from Salem, with Master Isaac Johnson, whose wife, the Lady Arbella, lay sick unto death in her new home, and never more would don the brave attire in which Alice Bradford had expressed such womanly interest. With these were assembled Sir Richard Saltonstall, Master Bradstreet, soon to be Governor of the Bay Colony, and Pynchon, ancestor, perhaps, of Hawthorne’s Hester; all the magistrates in fact of New England, all the representatives of legal or spiritual authority upon this side of the broad seas; for these men were about to test their right to self-government, and to exercise jurisdiction over the liberty, the property, the persons, nay, the very lives of others, and doubtless felt that in case this right were to be called in question from the throne or the Star Chamber, it might be well to secure the strength of numbers and authoritative consensus.

But we, like Bradford and his company, are only guests at Mishawum, as they still called Charlestown, and must hasten back to Plymouth. Enough to briefly note that Morton of Merry Mount, who had audaciously returned to his “old nest” and his old ways, after Allerton had been forced to dismiss him from his house in Plymouth, was brought before the magistrates, somewhat unfairly tried, and sentenced to be “set in the bilboes,” and afterward sent prisoner to England. His entire property was to be confiscated, and his house burned in presence of the Indians whom he had robbed and insulted, and so speedily was the first portion of the sentence carried out that, as the court left the Great House at noon, they passed close beside the criminal already seated in the stocks with a party of Indian squaws staring at him, half in dismay, half in satisfaction.

“This way, Bradford! Don’t look upon him; ’tis no punishment for a gentleman,” muttered Standish, seizing the governor’s arm and dragging him in a sidelong direction, while Parson Wilson, and Increase Newell the Elder of the Charlestown church, stopped to administer a “word in season” to the defenseless prisoner.

The business of the Bay Colony finished, Governor Bradford begged the attention of his fellow magistrates to an affair in his own jurisdiction: one as important as life and death could make it, for it was a question of enforcing the death penalty upon a murderer, fully convicted and offering no plea of extenuating circumstances.

The culprit was John Billington, already notorious as the first person the Pilgrims had felt called upon to punish. Since that early day he had more than once come under discipline of the law, but now his offense exceeded all human bounds of forgiveness, and by the stern code of Old Testament justice merited nothing short of death.

The victim was a young man named John Newcomen, a somewhat rough and lawless companion, who had persisted in trapping and shooting over ground which Billington claimed as his own monopoly, although neither man made any pretense of ownership. The end was a bitter quarrel, after which Billington armed himself, and, lying in wait until Newcomen appeared, deliberately shot and killed him.

A solemn trial by jury ensued, whereat the crime was fully proven and no defense was attempted. A verdict of willful murder was brought in, and no recommendation to mercy was offered by the stern foreman. The trial could not have been more deliberate or more just, but sentence was not immediately pronounced, for as Bradford frankly declared to his fellow magistrates, he shrank both before God and man from pronouncing the words that should deprive a fellow mortal of life, and before doing so he desired the counsel and concurrence of the other New England authorities.

“Who killeth man, by man shall his blood be shed,” quoted Endicott in the silence which followed Bradford’s solemn appeal. “It is the law of God.”

“And haply,” added Winthrop, “a sharp example in these early days may hinder the loss of more valuable lives hereafter.”

“With God is no respect of persons,” spoke Elder Brewster in tones of stern reproof; but Parson Wilson, with almost a sneer, retorted,—

“Then let him die as one of the princes, even as Zeb and Salmana.”

A little more discussion followed, but the result was obvious, and the next day Bradford turned his face toward home with a heavy heart, and yet a mind resolved upon the terrible duty soon after fulfilled.

CHAPTER XII.

SIR CHRISTOPHER GARDINER.

It was several days after the governor’s return to Plymouth, and Alice had wondered more than once if aught beside the gloom and sorrow of Billington’s execution lay upon her husband’s mind, when, after noon of one of those heavenly days in late September, in which one’s whole life goes out to the joy of living, Bradford after hesitating a moment at the door, turned back and said,—

“Come, Elsie, do on your hood and walk with me a little.”

“Gay and gladly, Will,” replied she, and in a few moments they had passed down by Elder Brewster’s house toward the brook, and then turning to the right crossed on the stepping-stones, and striking into the Namasket Path strolled along until, reaching a lovely intervale, afterward called Prence’s Bottom, and now Hillside, they sat down upon a fallen tree trunk, and Bradford abruptly asked,—

“Was it not one Sir Christopher Gardiner that our Pris spoke of when she first came as some sort of sweetheart of hers?”

“Yes. He gave her that lordly neckerchief she wears betimes. She calls him a Knight of the Golden Melice, and then again Knight of the Holy Sepulchre,—poor maid!”

And Alice laughed as matrons do at the follies of maidenhood. But Bradford shook his head, and plucking a great frond of goldenrod softly smote his own palm with it, while he said,—

“’Tis a bad business, Alice, a bad business, and I fear worse may come of it.”

“Worse! Worse than what, Will? There’s no harm done as yet. The girl’s not wearing the willow, nor needing pity; it’s not likely she’ll see or hear of him again, and after a while she’ll wed William Wright, who woos her honestly and openly.”

“Alice, the man is here.”

“Here! What man?”

“Sir Christopher Gardiner, Knight of the Golden Melice and the Holy Sepulchre, and of what you will beside. I’ve seen and spoken with him, wife.”

“You! When and where, for pity’s sake?”

“Softly now, and I’ll tell you. When we left the Bay people the captain would have us stop at Squantum Head to visit Mistress Thompson in her widowhood and see if she lacked aught, or wished us to recommend her to the good offices of her neighbors of the Bay, and so we did”—

“How is her child, Will?”

“Well and hearty, as is she herself, and farming her island, which Standish would have us call Trevor’s Island, but we would liever name Thompson’s Island in his honor who was her husband and father of the boy. Now while we talked with the widow, I remembered me that Winthrop had mentioned some new settlers hard by Squantum, a gentleman, as he said, named Gardiner, who claimed some title, and who, besides several servants, entertained as housekeeper a comely young woman whom he called his cousin.

“Master Winthrop had not seen them, but when I said we would tarry a little with the Widow Thompson, he asked me if it were in my way to take a look at this Gardiner, and let him hear my judgment of him. Truth to tell, I did not at the first mind me of our Prissie’s story of her Knight of the Golden Melice, for such toys get cast into the dark corners of a man’s mind”—

“Unless it be his own case, Will,” interposed Alice with tender jibing in her voice.

Bradford smiled reply, but went on with his story. “So while the rest drank a cup of metheglin, and ate some of Mistress Thompson’s curds and cream, Standish and I clomb the brave headland ever I hope to be known as Squanto’s Point, and presently came upon a new cabin fairly seated above a rising ground some half mile south of the Neponset’s River; a pretty home as one would wish to see, with a posy bed under the window, and vines from the woods trained over the door and casement, this last set with glass and swinging open, for all the world like a cottage of Old England.

“Well, we came to the door, and Standish rapped with his sword hilt after his own masterful fashion, so that there presently run out a—well, I was about to say a maid, for she was young and very comely to look upon, but in sad certainty I know not—she may be the man’s wife, and charity will not have us suspect ill that is not brought home by proof.”

“How was she so very fair, Will?”

“Why, her hair was of yellow gold, and her eyes blue as a June sky, and the white and red of her face so cunningly mixt that it minded me of the may in our hedges at home, or of the mayflower that we find here in Plymouth woods, and her shape was lissome and delightsome as those young birches, and her little hands were white and soft, and her voice as sweet as— Why, Elsie, woman, what is it?”

“’Tis naught, ’tis naught! Leave go my hand I pray you, sir. I’m for home, but you need not haste!”

“Now, now, now! What, is mine own true-love jealous that I find another woman fair? Why, Elsie, I go well-nigh to blush for you! Come then, to punish you I’ll not say the words that were springing to my lips. I’ll not tell how the frighted, guilty look of those blue eyes minded me of other eyes steadfast and pure and serene as the evening star, nor how the fluttering, broken tones of that sweet voice brought to the ears of my heart a voice as sweet as that, but calm and steady, and full of the assured peace of a clear conscience”—

“Nay, then, Will, tell me naught, but let me creep close to thy knee like a chidden child and hide my face thus, for indeed I’m shamed to show it.”

“Nay, let me look once upon thee in sweet penitence, since ’tis so seldom one may find the chance! Well there, then, hide it an thou wilt, sweetheart, for if I look too closely on’t I forget all else. Well, then, this lady, we will call her, ran to see who knocked, and meeting Myles’s grim face, which he had forgot to deck for lady’s gaze, she uttered a sharp little cry, and fell back to give place to the gay figure of such a cavalier as we used to see strutting up and down Paul’s Walk in London, hand on hips, and mustachios curled up to either eye, and beaver cocked a’ one side, and laces and fine needlework, with velvets and silks, and all scented like a posy bed, or the civet cat you love so well.”

“I mind me of the gallants of Paul’s Walk, Will; but did this man really have laces and needlework and scent and all those matters?”

“Well, he had the air of having them, sweetheart, and that is still the main point, you know. So out he came, hand on sword hilt, and eyes so terrific that I, poor wight, shrunk back affrighted”—

“You affrighted, indeed!”

“Ay, but you don’t know how terrific a mien this paladin put on, dame! Our captain bristled at sight of it as the wolf hound does at sight of the wolf, and I feared me for the moment that they would fall to before I could cry, ‘A list, a list, good gentles’!”

“Oh, Will, how can you! But go on.”

“Well, seeing the peril, I stirred myself as best I might to avoid it, and elbowing Standish aside, I doffed my hat and said,—

“‘Pardon, good sir, but we have come to change courtesies with our neighbors. We are men of the Plymouth Colony, and have been to visit the new-comers at the Bay, who told us you were here.’

“Upon that our host’s visage relaxed, and he made some sort of civil reply, although none could doubt he would liever our room than our company; but he had us in, and as the young woman lingered near, he spoke of her presently as ‘My cousin, Mistress Mary Grove, who of her kindness keepeth my house.’

“‘And your name, sir, is Gardiner?’ queried I; and he, cock-a-hoop in a moment as one insulted, set his hat on ’s head, and twisting his mustachios to a needle’s point, pouted his lips to say,—

“‘I am Sir Christopher Gardiner, sirs, Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and Chevalier of the Golden Melice. And your names and quality, if I may make so bold?’

“But so insolent was the tone and so belligerent the manner of this announcement that before I could find words for reply the captain stepped before me, his own hat set aside, and, Heaven save the mark! twisting his own stubbly russet mustachios as fiercely as the other, the while his hand on Gideon’s hilt, he cried,—

“‘This gentleman is Master William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony; and I am Myles Standish, commandant, for want of a better, of the colony’s military force.’

“Now this bold assumption, which would have made some men laugh, and set others upon opposition, just jumped with the humor of our new friend, and taking off his hat, he held out a hand for ours; saying, handsomely enough, that he had heard marvelous tales of our captain’s prowess, and also of the wisdom, and I know not what, of Plymouth’s governor. Faith, I know not but he said he had crossed the seas to look upon two such marvels! Certes, he gave no other motive, since in religion he seems of that convenient stripe which fits with any pattern, and for hard work he is no better fitted than is his cousin and housekeeper, whose lily-white hands could ill trundle a mop or work a churn-dasher.”

“And what do they honestly seek here in the wilderness?”

“Why, truth to tell, I fear me they seek nothing honestly, but the rather a dishonest refuge from judgment. If ever woman wore a guilty and shamefaced look, it was that poor wench when first she met us; and as for the man, although he vapored much about his desire for a quiet life, far from the setbacks and downfalls of worldly affairs, and his love of sylvan solitudes and the like, I trust him not,—nay, not so far as just out of reach of a tipstaff’s clutch; he’s false, so false that even as he talked he seemed to sneer at his own professions.”

“But our Prissie, Will! If this is indeed the man she talked of”—

“Ay, that’s where the matter sits close to our hearts, wife. Did ever she talk of him to you, in the way of picturing out his face and mien?”

“Nay, for after that once I never would let her talk of him; but still she gave me the notion of a gay cavalier, such a man as haunts the king’s court, and as you say struts in Paul’s Walk,—a man who well might be the one you and the captain saw.”

“But—Mary Grove?”

The matron’s fair cheek flushed a little, for the purity of that age was of the order that hates sin without having learned to love the sinner, and shrinks back from the sight or touch of evil instead of fearlessly examining the hurt, and applying the oil and wine. The world does grow in good, let the pessimists deny it as they may.

“Pris will never know that the man is on this side the sea, unless we tell her,” said Alice presently.

“No. And I will caution the captain not to mention the matter.”

“Oh, he will have mentioned it to Barbara, and she to Priscilla Alden, before this!” exclaimed Alice. “They are like one household, the Standishes and Aldens, and Priscilla loves to talk.”

“But Barbara is very prudent, and if she has heard so ill a story will think twice before she spreads it. I never knew a woman less given to gossip, except mine own wife. I’ll tell thee, Alice, I’ll ask Myles if he has told the tale; and if he has, I’ll ask him to speak to Barbara and find how far it has gone.”

“But do not tell even the captain of our poor maid’s folly,” interposed Alice.

“Nay, child, I’m as jealous for Prissie’s good name as if she were mine own sister. Come, you are shivering, and the night dews begin to fall. Let us go home.”

CHAPTER XIII.

ONE! TWO! THREE! FIRE!

Alice Bradford’s instinct had correctly foreseen that Myles would narrate his adventures to his wife just as Bradford had to his; but the governor’s reason was also correct in arguing that Barbara would be likely to keep such a story to herself, and the rather that Pris Carpenter had once spoken the name of Sir Christopher Gardiner in her presence with so much of maidenly flutter that Barbara felt there was a story underneath.

So when Bradford took occasion, over a pipe in the captain’s den, to suggest that it was as well for the present to keep the story of the knight of the Golden Melice from the public, Myles replied with a laugh,—

“So says Mistress Standish. I told her, as indeed I tell her most matters; but when she had listened, her first word was, ‘I hope neither you nor the governor will noise this story abroad, for it might do much harm, and could do no good.’ A prudent woman is”—

“From the Lord,” said Bradford. “And you and I have cause to thank Him for the gift.”

The talk drifted to other matters; and as the weeks and months went on, the subject was not resumed until March came in with all the chilly rigor of a New England seashore spring, and yet with certain fitful gleams and promises of better things in store. It was in the midst of one of those tempestuous storms incident to March, and always reminding one of a fascinating naughty child’s passionate burst of temper, that Hobomok appeared at the Fort, escorting a stranger Indian.

“Weetonawah wants head chief,” announced he succinctly.

The captain looked up from his Cæsar, and laid down his pipe.

“Weetonawah is welcome,” said he in the Pokanoket dialect, which he had acquired in perfection. “But Hobomok should not bring him here. The head chief’s wigwam is below the hill.”

“Pokanokets like The-Sword-of-the-White-Men best,” replied the stranger in a final sort of manner, and Hobomok’s suppressed “Hugh!” seemed to indorse the sentiment. Standish smiled,—for who does not love to be trusted above his fellows?—and, rising, he threw his cloak about his shoulders, saying,—

“Well, we will seek the head chief together, and take counsel upon thy matters, Weetonawah.”

So, unmindful of the rain, as men who live close to Nature will still become, the three went down the hill, and found Bradford in his study reading the Georgics, until such time as the weather would permit him to plough his own fields; for now that “oxen strong to labor” had immigrated, their fellow-colonists were able to improve upon the earlier methods of agriculture, and the plough had superseded the hoe whose rude labors had slain John Carver. Laying aside the book, but with its pleasant influence upon his face, Bradford received his guests, gave a cup of metheglin to each of the Indians, who would rather it had been Nantz, and asked Standish what he would take, but the captain shook his head.

“I’ve had my noon meat, and care for nothing until night. Now, Weetonawah, tell out your tidings to the head chief.”

So Weetonawah, who spoke no English, told in his own tongue—Standish now and again translating for the benefit of Bradford, who never became as apt an Indian scholar as the captain—how he and a Massachusetts brave, while hunting, had come across a white man seated beside a camp-fire, and leaning his head upon his hand as though sick or sorry, they knew not which. Approaching with due precautions, they found him friendly, and willing to change tobacco for some birds to make a broth, for he was so fevered as not to crave solid food. But when they had parted from him a little way, the Massachusetts man halted, and choosing a war-arrow from his quiver, gave Weetonawah to understand that this was a criminal fleeing from justice, and that the white men at the Bay had bade the Indians search the woods between Shawmut and Piscataqua for him, promising a reward to whoever should bring him in.

Still, during the brief interview beside the camp-fire, both red men had silently marked how thoroughly armed, and how alert in spite of his illness, the fugitive remained, and the Massachusetts man felt that at close quarters he might fare even as Wituwamat or Pecksuot in combat with The-Sword-of-the-White-Men; so, even in their friendly parting, he had laid his plan to turn back and shoot the sick man as he crouched over his fire; and lest his comrade should claim any part of the reward, he would go upon the war-path alone, and rejoin him at the wigwams of the Namasket village.

But Weetonawah was brother to one of the men killed at Wessagussett, and he had imbibed such a terror of The-Sword-of-the-White-Men and his vengeance upon those who molested the palefaces that he would rather have killed his Massachusetts friend, and taken the chances of punishment from Massasoit, than to be named as companion of an Indian who had killed a white man. So, half by argument and half by threat, he led away the assassin, and forced from him a promise to suspend his purpose until orders should be obtained from Plymouth; consenting that if the head chief and The Sword gave permission, he should alone slay the fugitive and claim the reward.

So far, Weetonawah spoke and Bradford listened, but at this point he started up and exclaimed,—

“An Indian promise! Who knows but that even now the wretch has stolen back to slay yonder poor fugitive? Horrible! What warrant have you, Indian, for believing this murderer will refrain?”

Sternly repeating the query, and receiving the reply, Standish grimly smiled.

“He says that the Massachusetts swore upon his totem, but to make the matter sure he brought him along hither, promising him a good noggin of strong waters, and he is even now in the kitchen, waiting.”

“Have him in! Hobomok, fetch him in!” cried Bradford, still in dismay. “Kill a white man in cold blood! Shoot a sick man shivering over a camp-fire! Standish, they are savages and heathen to the end, and we may as well preach Christ to the wolves and bears as to them.”

“Your best Indian preacher is still a snaphance,” replied the captain grimly, as his mind glanced back to Pastor Robinson’s strictures upon the Wessagussett chastisement.

“Here they come! Now speak to this man in his own tongue, and make him understand that if he kills this white man we will require it at his hand, and that, after no stinted measure. Terrify him, Myles, as you well know how! They fear you more than all the power of the Bay Colony put together.”

Now the fact remains that so long as Myles Standish lived his was a name to conjure with among the red men; and although, except at Wessagussett, he seldom, if ever, was engaged in actual conflict, or was guilty of their blood, the rumor of his coming was enough to disperse many an angry party, and to restrain many incendiary counsels. Nor was it fear alone, for the savages admired and emulated, yes, and loved the man; he went freely among them, slept in their wigwams, ate beside their fires, smoked the pipe of peace with their warriors, and showed human and friendly interest in their concerns. Never at any crisis did he forget to exempt women and children from the fortunes of war, and it was under neither his leadership nor his counsels that the Pequot atrocities were committed by the soldiers of the Puritan Bay Colony.

So now, as he sternly addressed the Shawmut Indian in his own tongue, the latter visibly quailed, and, not daring to reply directly, slunk behind Hobomok, and in a torrent of muttered gutturals besought him to assure The Sword that his voice was as the voice of the Great Spirit, and he would obey it as implicitly, for if he did not his own totem would turn upon him and destroy him, as indeed he should well deserve, and— But here Standish held up a hand and impatiently interrupted with,—

“There, there, that’s enough! You understand me, Shawmut, and you know that what I promise I perform. Now then, Bradford, what is to be done?”

“Why, the man must be taken and brought in as gently as may be. Doubtless he is in some sort a lawbreaker hiding from the justice of Governor Winthrop, and it may be our duty to return him to the Bay; but the first thing is to discover who he is and of what accused. Explain, if it please you, to both these Indians that they are to find this man, and take him by force of numbers or strategy, but without violence, and bring him safely to this house. What reward have the authorities of the Bay offered for his capture?”

“A kilderkin of biscuit, a horseman’s cloak, and five ells of scarlet cloth,” reported Standish after a good deal of discussion with the two Indians.

“The Bay is rich,” replied Bradford dryly. “Tell them if they bring in this man unharmed we will give twenty pound weight of sugar, and that is a large reward, be the man who he may.”

The Massachusetts Indian listened as this proffer was repeated, and then in his guttural and sullen voice muttered something at which Standish frowned and answered angrily, while Hobomok gave way to a derisive chuckle. As the two turned and glided stealthily out of the room, the captain also laughed and said,—

“The red rascal wanted a piece and some powder and shot, or at least a pottle or two of firewater, as he calls it.”

“Ay! there’s the outcome of Thomas Morton’s work,” replied Bradford. “The Bay people dealt hardly with him, yet none too hardly when we see the despite he has done to all of us by arming the savages.”

“Hardly, do you call it?” echoed Standish. “Well, I know not. Had I been the judge the sentence should have been shorter and less spiteful. To my mind it is too much like the savages themselves to crop a man’s ears, and set him in the stocks, and pelt him with garbage, and burn his house in his own sight, and mulct him of his money, and ship him out of the country, and after all leave him at liberty to pull the wool over the eyes of the big-wigs and come back again to plague us as he did before. ’Tis womanish to invent so many ways of tormenting an offender, and yet not put further offense out of his power.”

“And if you had been judge?” asked Bradford with a shrewd smile.

For answer the captain raised an imaginary piece to his shoulder and gave the word of command,—

“One! Two! Three! FIRE!”

And with the last word he brought down his right foot with full force upon his own pipe, which had fallen unheeded from his pocket. The governor laughed, and Standish ruefully picked up the amber mouthpiece, exclaiming,—

“Now, by my faith! there goes the meerschaum that Jans Wiederhausen carved on purpose for a parting gift to me when we left Leyden ten year ago. And serves me right for wasting time on such boys’ tricks as yon brag of what I might have done had all been other than it was. Well, well! Sorry and sad I am to lose that pipe! Now I must turn to the one Hobomok has carved out of what I take to be a jasper stone, but ’t is heavy, and cannot drink up the poison of the tobacco as my meerschaum did. There’s naught for a pipe like meerschaum, Will.”

“Clay is well enough for me,” replied the governor with a smile, as he brought a new clay pipe from the cupboard and presented it to Myles.

Nor shall we be surprised to hear that when, a year later, Captain William Pierce came over in the Lyon to Boston Bay, he brought a fine meerschaum pipe as a present from Governor Bradford to his friend Captain Standish.

CHAPTER XIV.

SIR CHRISTOPHER ENJOYS THE CHASE.

Five days later, Priscilla Alden sat in the gloaming of the wild March day before a fire so cheerful as to be truly perilous to the chimney of sticks laid up with mud attached like an elongated hornet’s nest to the outside of the house. Upon her knees lay little Sally, future wife of Alexander Standish, but just now a child of two years old, with a bad cold upon her lungs and a tendency to croup, or, as her mother called it, quinsy; and it was by way of an ounce of prevention that Priscilla was roasting the little thing before this huge fire, and at the same time diligently rubbing her chest and throat with goose grease. The child, hardly knowing whether to be amused or annoyed at the process, kicked and struggled, uttering little cries varying from crowing laughter to indignant squeals, while the mother made all the play she could of the affair, now tickling the small creature in her fat neck, now answering her cries with counter-cries and merry Boo! Boo! Boo! and anon,—

“See, Sally! See the pretty fire! Shall mother throw Sally in and burn her all up?” rubbing away meantime, until the child’s white skin glowed like a rose and glistened like a mirror.

“She looks like the suckling pig you roasted last Thanksgiving, mother,” remarked John junior, who stood drying his feet before the unusual fire, preparatory to rushing out and wetting them again.

“Why so she is, mother’s darling little piggie-wiggie, mother’s little suckling piggie-wiggie, and she shall be all nicely basted and set down to roast for daddy’s supper, so she shall! Now, now, now! One more little rub to drive the basting well in! Now, now, now, mammy’s little Sally! Phew! who’s at the door, Johnny? Run and shut it before the air reaches little sister!”

“It’s only Betty,” remarked John with brotherly indifference, but still running to help his sister close the door against the playful south wind which insisted upon coming in along with his playmate, who laughed aloud as she closed the door in his face, set her back against it, and pulled off her hood to rearrange the soft red hair blown all over her face. Glancing toward her, the mother smiled with involuntary delight in her child’s beauty; and truly Betty was very pretty, very pretty indeed, having selected her features and coloring from her father’s pure Saxon type and her mother’s Latin traits, with rare eclecticism; for her deep and rich red hair was far more beautiful than John’s blond locks or Priscilla’s dusky tresses, and her eyes, halting between his blue orbs and her dark ones, had resulted in that sparkling brown we all love to watch in the woodland brook stealing out from the roots of trees. Her complexion, neither pale nor dark, was at once glowing and delicate, the white values bordering upon cream rather than snow, and the reds suggesting carnations rather than roses. As for the mouth, it was too young yet to have got its expression, but the lines were noble and clear, sweet and pure, promising much for their maturity. A winsome little lassie, and so her mother knew, but was far too wise to show it. In fact, her tone was almost reproving as she said,—

“Why, Betty! How you are blown about! You are growing too big a girl to play the hoiden.”

“Goody Billington calls me a tear-coat,” replied the child, laughing in a blithe, fearless voice very pleasant to hear.

“Goody Billington”—began the mother, flushing a little, but checking herself as she sat Sally up and pulled her little red flannel nightgown over her head, while she asked in quite another tone, “Did you see father, Betty?”

“Yes’m, and he sent me to tell you he’d not be home for a little while. Oh, mother, what do you think! I was running out north to find father, as you bade me, and just as he stepped out of the woods with his axe and Rover, we saw two Indians coming down the trail, and they were driving a man, a white man, in front of them; and he looked so tired and so sick, and all bent over as if he would fall down, and no hat or cloak, and his doublet tattered and torn like the scarecrow we dressed for the cornfield, and his poor hands all cut and bleeding and tied behind him with a strip of deer-hide, and one of the Indians holding the end of it, and every once in a while jerking it to make the poor man go on; for indeed he looked fit to fall every minute, and, cold as it was, the sweat dropped off the dark points of his hair and rolled down his poor dirty face. Oh, mother, I was like to cry at such a sight, and father”—

“Ay, what did your father do?” asked Priscilla eagerly, as, lapping the child close to her breast, she turned half round toward Betty, who with fixed eyes seemed witnessing again the piteous sight she described.

“Oh, father! He talked with them a little, but you know he is none so quick at the Indian, not like the captain”—

“Never mind,” interrupted Priscilla impatiently. “’Tis not for you to say another man’s quicker at aught than your father, but what came of it?”

“Why, when father had talked a little he shook his head and said in English, ‘Nay, I can make naught on’t; you must come to the governor;’ and then we all came on toward the housen, and daddy said to me that I should run home like a good girl, and tell you he would be here anon, when he had seen the governor.”

“Ay, he’ll not think of himself till every one else is served, but I’ll not let him balk himself of a good supper if I cook a dozen, one after the other.”

And Priscilla, stepping into the little bedroom off the kitchen, laid the sleeping baby in her cradle, and had no more than returned to the larger room when the door again opened to admit her husband, with a look of considerable perplexity upon his genial face.

“Well, goodman, and what’s it all about?” demanded Priscilla with her usual impetuosity, as, coming within the radius of her influence, John’s brow cleared, and an expectant smile softened his mouth.

“Why, dame, ’tis a coil, for you to unravel if thou canst. Betty told you, mayhap, of the prisoner the Indians brought in.”

“Yes?”

“Well, the governor and the captain and Hobomok are off to the woods after deer, and not yet home, and Dame Bradford and her sister are in the woods looking for wintergreen and sassafras for the spring beer the dame makes so famously after thy recipe”—

“Nay, she makes it better than I,” interrupted Priscilla, replying to her husband’s proud smile. “Well?”

“So Christian Penn would not let me leave the savages and the captive there, for the Indians couldn’t, and the white man wouldn’t, speak a word of English, and so”—

“You brought them home, goodman?”

“Why yes; how did you know that, Priscilla?”

“By art magic. Where are they now?”

“I left them in the cowshed until I knew thy mind about it, wife.”

“Nay, then, John! When was my mind other than thine in a deed of charity?” asked Priscilla tenderly. “Fetch them in, I pray thee, with no more ado.”

And in a moment more John had ushered in a figure at sight of which Priscilla exclaimed indignantly,—

“Why did you not unbind his arms, John Alden? The shame of seeing a white man so used by savages, and you not to make in to his rescue!”

“He would not have it, nor would the Indians,” expostulated John helplessly.

“Would not have it!” repeated his wife contemptuously, while with the scissors hanging at her girdle she cut the thong of deer-hide painfully binding the wounded wrists of the captive. As she approached, one of the Indians growled a remonstrance and muttered something, of which Alden understood only the words “Big Chief,” but with one stride he placed himself between his wife and the remonstrant, and first laboriously evolving Indian words equivalent to “Stand back! It’s all right!” he added in English,—

“The Big Chief isn’t at home, but I’m here, and my wife will do as she sees fit. It’ll be bad for the man who tries to hinder her.”

“And did not you want my husband to unbind your hands, friend?” asked Priscilla, as she gently removed the thong which had sunk deep into the bruised flesh.

“My thanks to you, fair dame,” replied the stranger, breaking silence for the first time. “No, I did not wish to be released until the Governor or the Captain of Plymouth had seen my plight and told me if it was by their command these savages had thus dealt with me; I knew not what might be the authority of this gentleman”—

“My husband is John Alden, lieutenant of the colony’s forces, and second in command to Captain Standish.”

“My service to you, Lieutenant Alden, and I crave your pardon for what may have seemed surly silence under your first advances; but truth to tell, I am a little overborne with fatigue and annoyance”—

“Indeed, sir, you are fit to drop,” broke in Priscilla indignantly. “Here, sit you down in the roundabout chair, and say not a word more till I fetch you a cup of cordial-waters. John, do get rid of these Indians. I hate the sight of them! Let them go wait at Master Hopkins’s until the governor comes home to take order with them”—

But at this moment, and while Priscilla, half filling a small silver cup with Hollands gin slightly tempered with water, held it to the lips of the fainting man, the door suddenly opened, and Bradford, followed by Standish and Hobomoc, entered the room.

“My wife and Christian Penn sent me up to ask about—ah yes—why—Captain, this gentleman is—Your name, good sir?”

“My name is Sir Christopher Gardiner,” replied the captive, rallying his strength to reply with dignity. “And as you seem to recall, we met once before at my poor home in the Massachusetts. Well enough I know that my hospitality then was not such as befits either your quality or mine, and yet methinks your response is even less courteous.”

“We knew not who the fugitive might be of whom the Indians told us,” returned Bradford gravely. “But evil entreated though you seem to have been, your case would have been even worse had it not been for us.”

“They went about to kill you, man,” broke in Standish bluntly. “And if the hound the Bay Colony laid upon your track had not fallen in with one of our own Indians, you had long since tumbled across your own camp-fire, with an arrow through your heart.”

“Say you so, Captain,” replied Gardiner faintly. “’Tis but another proof that a man seldom knows his best friends; but why do the Bay people seek my life?”

“That is best known to yourself, sir,” began Bradford somewhat severely; but Priscilla Alden interposed,—

“I pray your pardon, Master Bradford, but this man needs care and tendance rather than catechizing just now. Look but at those arms and hands!”

“Ay, look!” exclaimed Gardiner, holding up his arms, yet forced at once to drop them through pain.

Bradford and Standish stared in amazement, for through the tattered and stripped sleeves of the knight’s doublet and fine Hollands shirt could be seen many and cruel weals as of stripes, some of them still bleeding, others crusted with dry blood, and others lividly bruised. The hands were in even yet more pitiable case, discolored, swollen, and cut so that they hardly looked like hands at all.

“What is this? What has chanced to your hands and arms, sir?” demanded the governor.

“Ask those red devils there,” replied Sir Christopher bitterly. “And let me ask if it was not done by your own orders.”

“By my orders! Never, so help me God!” cried Bradford; and then turning upon the Indians he demanded,—

“Is this your work, Weetonawah, or is it the Shawmut’s? Did I not warn you both to bring in the man with all care and humane tenderness?”

The Indians looked at each other, drew their skin mantles closer about them as if in assertion of their own dignity, and finally uttered a few words which Standish as briefly translated:—

“They say they did but a little whip him with sticks, and it is no harm.”

“But why did they whip him, little or much?”

“My faith! they could never have taken me alive, had not they beat my last weapon out of my hands,” broke in the knight. “When they are gone and I am a little refreshed I will tell you the whole story, gentlemen; but if you indeed wish me well, drive away these assassins and leave me to this comely matron’s tendance for a while, at least.”

“’Tis well spoken,” replied the governor in his usual placable voice. “John Alden, will it suit you to keep this man over-night, if no longer, and will you, Priscilla, give him the care he needs and you so well understand?”

“If the goodwife says yes, I’ll not say no,” declared Alden; and Priscilla added a little sharply,—

“’Tis the best word said yet.”

CHAPTER XV.

AND DESCRIBES IT.

Not until the next afternoon did Priscilla Alden allow her husband to report the patient ready to receive the visitors who awaited her summons, but when the governor, the captain, the Elder, and the doctor were finally admitted they found him a very different looking person from the captive driven into town by the Indians, who had already been paid their reward and dismissed.

Like most of the colonists, John Alden had enlarged his house from the rude shelter of the earliest years to a dwelling suited to a growing and thrifty family, so that at the other side of the door opening into the great cheerful kitchen with its southern and eastern windows lay a new room, more carefully finished than the first, its floor nearly covered with rugs of Priscilla’s own manufacture, its fireplace decorated with Dutch tiles, its woodwork painted, and its casement window set with real glass in leaden bands, instead of the oiled paper or linen which sufficed for the kitchen windows.

Here were collected the few pieces of furniture which William Molines and his wife had managed to bring over from France, Holland, and England, the three homes of their years before the Pilgrimage. The deep and wide carved chest of black oak, with cunningly wrought hinges and a key nearly as large as that of the Bastile, stood on one side of the fireplace, its depths well stored with damask and napery, bed linen and window curtains, some of Priscilla’s own spinning and some of her mother’s, while certain articles of fine damask wrought upon looms of Flanders, and bought even there at a great price, were hereditary treasures.

On the other side of the fireplace stood a “buffet,” of English make and quaintly carved with heads of beasts and gaping gargoyles which were the terror of Betty and her brothers on the rare occasions when they were allowed to penetrate the solemn solitudes of this state apartment. This buffet was not as well supplied as that of the governor’s wife, and boasted no Venetian glass, although there were four plain glass tumblers, or rummers, as they were then called, and a few pieces of Delft ware with a china bowl so precious that Priscilla seldom dared to look at it. Around the neck of one of the gargoyles projecting from the cornice of the buffet hung a string of curious Indian, or rather Ceylonese beads, each carved into semblance of an idol’s head, a fact happily unguessed by their owners, or indeed by Plymouth, which would have demanded an auto-da-fé of them in the town square; but by some unconscious cerebration Priscilla had decorated the other gargoyle with a string of wampum, thus balancing the superstition of oldest eastern idolatry with that of newest, or rather latest discovered, western. Later on, this string of wampum became quite an appreciable bit of property, but at present it was scarcely more than a curiosity; for although it had been recommended to the Pilgrims some four years previous to this date by Isaac de Razières, the delightful Dutchman who visited Plymouth with overtures of friendship and menace from New Amsterdam, it had not as yet become the circulating medium it did later, since both the New England Indians and the New England colonists had to be educated to its use,—a use invented by those unhappy Pequots and Narragansetts upon whose shore the quahaug shells were found in perfection. The thrifty Dutchman in his visit to Plymouth had brought a quantity of wampum for sale, and the Pilgrims, after listening to his account of its uses and value, invested fifty pounds with him at the rate of a penny for three bits of the blue, or six of the white shell, this price bringing the blue pieces nearly to the value of a cent of our currency.

But we must linger no longer over the description of Priscilla’s “withdrawing” room, as it might very literally be called, but stand aside to allow the Fathers of Plymouth to enter and find Sir Christopher Gardiner seated in an invalid-chair beside the fire, writing in a little pocket-book which at their entrance he closed and hid in his breast.

Grave salutations passed, the guests were seated, and Alden, who had ushered them in, would have left the room, but was bidden to remain by the governor, while Standish with one of his rare smiles added,—

“I can answer for my friend John’s discretion as for mine own.” At which pleasant word the giant looked foolishly glad, for it was the most friendly speech Standish had vouchsafed since the night when Alden’s ill-timed slumbers had so nearly dishonored his captain.

“And now, sir,” began Bradford in a tone finely mingled of magisterial authority and benevolent hospitality, “if you are sufficiently recovered from the hardships of your journey hither, we should be glad to hear some account of your coming into such straits, and especially of what complaint the rulers of the Bay Colony may have against you.”

“A truly reasonable inquiry, Master Governor, and one which I shall find joyful content in gratifying,” replied the knight, assuming an easier position, and stretching his shapely legs, clad in a pair of John Alden’s best hose, toward the fire. The action attracted Bradford’s notice, and, with Pris Carpenter’s fancies in his mind, he scrutinized his guest with more attention than men generally bestow upon one another’s personal appearance.

Tall, dark, with a hawk’s eyes, and an eagle’s nose above an enormous mustache, which could not, however, conceal a riotous and sensual mouth, with dark floating hair now carefully dressed, and a smooth-shaven cleft chin telling of both will and courage, the knight was beyond controversy a handsome man in spite of his forty or fifty years, and one well suited to turn the brain of a romantic girl. His expression of reckless and jeering self-assertion, thinly veiled under a mask of deference and deprecation, was less propitious than his features, but as Bradford shrewdly told himself was by no means the expression he would wear in conversation with a young maiden whom he wished to please.

“Yes, I shall be most happy, most content, to tell you whatever in your opinion, sir, it imports you to know of my poor history,” pursued Sir Christopher in a vague fashion, as if inwardly employed in concocting a romance to serve instead of the truth. “But I know not well where to begin. Shall I tell you that my father is a wealthy gentleman of Gloucester in England, and is, or was, poor man, nephew of that Bishop Gardiner, Lord of the see of Winchester, who did God service under Queen Mary”—

“Peace, ribald!” broke in the stern voice of Elder Brewster. “If indeed you are of kin to that bloody persecutor and servant of a yet more murderous mistress, boast not of it here among those who have fled into the wilderness to escape the cruelties of the Scarlet Woman and those who serve her.”

“Lo you now! I do most humbly crave your pardon, most worthy—nay, then, what do they call men who are no priests, and yet take upon them the priest’s office under John Calvin and his fellows?”

“Sorry should I be to seem discourteous or inhospitable to a wounded man,” exclaimed Bradford indignantly, “but men have been set in the bilboes and worse for less offense than such words.”

“Do I not know it?” retorted Gardiner. “Did not I, with these eyes, see mine own friend Thomas Morton set in the bilboes and direfully insulted in yon village of Boston, for less,—nay, for naught—for naught—but scaring a pack of saucy Indians by firing some hail-shot over their heads to fright them into bringing him a canoe? And did I not see him, less than two months gone by, haled down to the quay and put by main force aboard a skiff which rowed him out to the Handmaid, a crank leaky old tub, not half victualed or half found, and no provision for his comfort, nay, for his very life, but a handful or two of corn out of his own provision, stolen out of his house at Merry Mount before it was set afire? Yes, sirs, set afire as the Handmaid sailed out of port, as a taunt and a gibe to a helpless prisoner! Ha, ha, though! That word ‘helpless’ minds me of a merry joke even in the midst of such dolor. When our friends yonder had got poor Morton into their boat, and rowed him to the side of the Handmaid,—and marry, she’s much such a handmaid as Hagar of the Bible, turned out into the wilderness with neither meat nor water enough to keep poor Ishmael alive”—

“Profane man! Do you dare”—began Brewster, but with an uplifted hand and deprecatory bow the knight interrupted him:—

“Pardon, your reverence, though ’t was a most apposite quotation and surely more scriptural than profane,—but let it pass. As I was saying, when the boat reached the Handmaid’s rotund sides and a rope was thrown over, Morton was bidden to seize it and climb aboard; but, as he himself might say, he put in a demurrer, and represented that having no business on board the Handmaid he hesitated to intrude where perhaps he was not wanted. The tipstaves persisted, Morton desisted, until in the end the rope was drawn up and a noose let down instead, wherein they netted him and so hoysed him on board, he laughing like a fiend at their toil and rage.”

“They should have put the noose around his neck, and not hasted to pull him inboard,” growled Standish; and Sir Christopher, turning airily upon him, cried,—

“Say you so, Captain Sh—nay, Captain Standish? Well, and truly there’s little love lost ’twixt you and Morton. He had a story that you pleaded hard for leave to shoot him with your own hand, when he was down here at Plymouth a prisoner as I am now.”

“I would have been glad enough to meet him man to man, and let him who was the better marksman shoot the other.”

“And a very pretty main it would be between two such fighting cocks as”—

“Enough of this!” exclaimed the governor, silencing with a gesture not only the captain, who had sprung to his feet, but the Elder, who with a slow red mounting to his cheek where it showed like the color in a hardy apple frozen and withered, yet clinging to the parent tree, seemed about to speak.

“Sir Christopher Gardiner, if that is indeed your name and degree, we men of Plymouth claim no titles, nor are we courtiers, skilled in cunning fence of word, but we have our own dignity as rulers of this little commonalty, and our self-respect as men. Be pleased, therefore, to lay aside all these quips and cranks, and tell us briefly who you are, and why you are found fleeing from the Bay, even at risk of your life.”

Somewhat impressed by the simple dignity of Bradford’s manner, and perhaps a little ashamed of his own levity, the knight at once threw it off, sat more upright in his chair, and fixing his eyes steadily upon Bradford’s face as if to avoid the challenge of Standish’s eager gaze, replied courteously,—

“I have already told you, Sir Governor, that I am Christopher Gardiner, son of a worthy gentleman of Gloucester in England. Early in youth I wandered away from home, and sojourned so many years among Jews, Turks, and other infidels, as the Prayer Book hath it, that my father disinherited me and gave my estates to a brother who clung to him—and to them. On the other hand, a certain potentate whose name you love not made me a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre and a Cavalier of the Milizia Aureata, commonly called the Golden Melice.”

“The Pope of Rome has no power to appoint a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre!” exclaimed Brewster, recalling worldly lore which he had thought forgotten. Gardiner bowed low and mockingly.

“Pardon! No doubt, reverend sir, you are better acquainted with His Holiness than I can be, but I go on with mine account of myself. Coming back to England after well-nigh thirty years’ absence, I find my father dead, my brother and his brood in possession, and naught left for the poor exile, should he ever return, but a beggarly thousand crowns and a nook beside the hall-fire so long as he should behave himself!

“Well, well, ’t is not good for me to dwell on those days; so to cut the matter short, I took my thousand crowns, and a few more that had hidden among the tatters of my knightly robes, and came hither to the New World, hoping to escape from men and the weariness of their ways. I bought a bit of land from a copper-colored gentleman calling himself Chickatawbut who professed to own it, and who made much complaint that the men of Plymouth had stolen from his mother’s grave the choice bearskins laid over it to keep the good gentlewoman warm through the storms of winter”—

“We bought some bearskins of a native, but knew not where he got them,” said Bradford with an air of annoyance, and Sir Christopher’s great mustache stirred in malicious glee at seeing that the pin-prick had reached the quick.

“I bought my land, and I built mine house, and I planted my garden, and I hired some Indian guides to show me the haunts of the game and fish, and I began to live much such an innocent and beneficent life as that of Adam in Paradise”—

“With yon fair lady as your Eve?” demanded Standish. The knight turned his eyes upon him and the spark kindled in their depths, but again Bradford interposed,—

“Leaving aside tropes and metaphors, Sir Christopher, may we ask what relation the gentlewoman we found at your house sustains toward yourself?”

“She is my cousin, my housekeeper, my poor little friend. Ah, indeed, gentlemen, you may leave her alone with no fear but she will suffer enough both for her own peccadillos and mine, since those gloomy bigots of the Bay have seized and hold her close prisoner, with low diet, and questionings like those of the Holy Office, day by day.”

And the man’s voice took on so genuine a tone of pain and fear as he thought upon his helpless companion that even Brewster forbore to press the subject further, and Bradford not unkindly inquired,—

“And why didst thou flee from this poor paradise of thine?”

“I heard by my friendly Indians, the same who afterward told me that Mary was a prisoner, that there was mischief plotting against me in the council chamber at Boston, and one fine morning when I saw a boat filled with tipstaves and bum-bailiffs crossing the river half a mile or so from my house”—

“Neponset the Indians call it,” murmured John Alden; and Gardiner nodded good-humoredly.

“Ay, so they do, yet at that moment I tarried not to discover if Winthrop’s men had learned its name as well as its navigation, but, throwing my shot-pouch and powder-flask around my neck, thrusting my compass into one pocket and a full flask into the other, I bade my poor little cousin good-by, and well armed, as you may be assured, I plunged into the forest, and set out for the New Netherlands, some sixty or seventy leagues to the southwest of Boston Bay.”

“They thought you would try to reach Piscataqua, where Hilton and others are seated. Church of England men, they, and more of your own fashion.”

“Why, of course they so thought, Master Governor, and that is why I went not thither; nor did I seek to come here because I felt myself in need of some air less pure and less attenuate than that which circles round a conventicle; I pined for the company of ordinary mortals like myself.”

“You hardly reached the New Netherlands, however,” suggested Bradford dryly.

“No. I fell sick the first night, from sleeping on the bare ground in a pitiless storm of rain and sleet, and I rested for a day or so with some natives whom I knew. Besides, had they much harmed her I left behind, I would have gone back and revenged her by at least John Winthrop’s life.”

“Come, now, that’s spoken man fashion!” exclaimed Standish, and the two soldiers exchanged an almost friendly glance and smile. But the smile quickly faded from the knight’s face as his thoughts went back to his terrible experience in the wilderness, and resting his elbow on his knee, with his chin in the cup of his hand, he stared gloomily into the fire, and went on:—

“I heard once and again from Boston, and I sent a token to my poor girl, bidding my messenger lie, and say that I was safe and well; then I went on, and wandered for days, nay, for weeks, up and down, hither and yon, fevered, wounded, helpless, yet unbroken. I met natives who told me of a great river in the Pequod country,—Canaughticott they called it; but I could not cross it save by the favor of those savages, the most bloody and the most implacable of any in the country, and I saw it would be but madness to attempt it. Then I was minded to linger about in the forest until summer, when I might make my way north to Piscataqua, or perhaps ship aboard some vessel bound to the New Netherlands, or even come hither and ask shelter,—in very truth I knew not what I would be at, for every way seemed barred, and I was too dazed and fevered much of the time to concoct a plan beyond the next meal, or the next lodging. At last the Massachusetts runner who had dogged the path to Piscataqua for two or three weeks tried another trail and came upon me. I since hear that he would have murthered me but for your influence, and I am beholden to you, one and all; for, sad as is my plight, I am not yet ready to make venture of a country even stranger to me than New England. But since the Bay had set a reward upon my head it might not safely rest even upon the dank leaves of the forest; and two days ago, while Samson so slept, the Philistines came upon him; that is to say, I wakened suddenly with a most uncomely savage bending over me, and trying to steal my snaphance which I hugged close to my breast. Alive in a moment, I sprang to my feet, dashed my fist into the fellow’s mouth and heard his teeth split off like icicles, even as I sprang for the other side of the thicket to make ready to shoot him. Now beyond that thicket lay a stream whose name I know not, but broader than the Thames at London”—

“Taunton River, we have named it,” again suggested Alden.

“Ay? Well, there lay a canoe pulled up on the bank, with the paddles in it. To seize that canoe and paddle across the river was my game, and haply so reach the New Netherlands; but as I put my shoulder to the bows the enemy fell upon me, a half dozen at least of hellish whooping savages with all their murderous motives uppermost. With one mighty heave I pushed off and sprang in, at the same moment presenting my piece now at this, now at that one of the savages. Well I knew that any one of them might hide behind a tree and pick me off with an arrow, and I found time to marvel that they did not, for how was I to know that they had been ordered to take me alive and unharmed? but even as the canoe felt the stream and swerved away from the shore, even as a delusive hope of escape danced before my eyes, the stern of the tittlish craft ran upon a rock, and presto! I was in the water, and what is worse, my piece and my rapier were at the bottom of the stream! I stooped to grope for the good blade, but it lay too deep, and as I rose they were upon me, yelling like fiends. One weapon remained, my little dagger of Venice, which I would not have lost for a gold piece, sith it is a dagger of happy memories and hath carved me many a puzzling knot, even as the great Alexander untied the Gordian knot with his own good blade”—

“Your dagger is safe, and shall be restored. I pr’ythee get on,” remonstrated Bradford.

“Sir, your impatience is flattering to my poor powers of narration, and sooth to say, I found myself much interested in the story as it went on. Well, I drew the dagger and I shook it in their faces after a most terrible fashion, and I swore most roundly that the first man who came within reach should taste its point; and so fearful and so truthful was my mien that they slunk back, and I even began to cast lightning glances toward the canoe as it lay stranded not many feet away, when some direct emissary of Satan whispered a plan to those imps of the same master, and two of them, retiring to the bushes, cut half a dozen or so of long poles and stripped them of their leaves and little shoots; then each man seizing one, they began to try to knock the dagger out of my hands, and as I swiftly changed it from side to side, and turned every way to shelter it, their dastardly blows rained down upon my hands and arms until the sleeves were cut to tatters and the skin beneath to ribbons of most unseemly hue. I held on so long as a man’s will may conquer flesh and blood, for I fancied that, knowing me to be a man of some daring and endurance they fain would take me alive to test my courage under torture, and I had liever provoke them to kill me then and there; but in the end, when the dagger was beaten out of my numb and swollen fingers, they closed in upon me like foul wolves upon a wounded stag, and all was over.

“They bound my arms, as Master Alden can tell you, most cruelly, and so soon as themselves were refreshed—although not so much as a drop of water gave they me until at night I managed to drink from a pool where we lay for a few hours—they set off for Plymouth; and the rest you know.”

“And the man is over-weary for safety. ’Tis best to leave him to rest, and to Mistress Alden’s ministrations.”

So spake Samuel Fuller, the kindly surgeon and physician of the Pilgrims; and Bradford cordially replied,—