Seated erect on the thwarts, all ready and eager for starting.

He too was eager to go, and thus put an end to his anguish,

Thinking to fly from despair, that swifter than keel is or canvass,

Thinking to drown in the sea the ghost that would rise and pursue him.

But as he gazed on the crowd, he beheld the form of Priscilla

Standing dejected among them, unconscious of all that was passing.

Fixed were her eyes upon his, as if she divined his intention,

Fixed with a look so sad, so reproachful, imploring, and patient,

That with a sudden revulsion his heart recoiled from its purpose

As from the verge of a crag, where one step more is destruction.

Strange is the heart of man, with its quick,

mysterious instincts!

Strange is the life of man, and fatal or fated are moments,

Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of the wall adamantine.

"Here I remain!" he exclaimed, as he looked at the heavens above him,

Thanking the Lord whose breath had scattered the mist and the madness,

Wherein, blind and lost, to death he was staggering headlong,

"Yonder snow-white cloud, that floats in the ether above me,

Seems like a hand, that is pointing and beckoning over the ocean,

There is another hand that is not so spectral and ghost-like,

thing but Gospel!

Lost in the sound of the oars was the last farewell of the Pilgrims.

O strong hearts and true! not one went back in the May-Flower.

No, not one looked back, who had set his hand to this ploughing!

Soon were heard on board the shouts and songs of the sailors

Heaving the windlass round, and hoisting the ponderous anchor,

Then the yards were braced, and all sails set to the west-wind,

Blowing steady and strong; and the May-
Flower sailed from the harbour,
Rounded the point of the Gurnet, and leaving
far to the southward

Island and cape of sand, and the Field of the
First Encounter,

Took the wind on her quarter, and stood for the open Atlantic,

Borne on the sand of the sea, and the swelling hearts of the Pilgrims.

Long in silence they watched the receding sail of the vessel,

Much endeared to them all, as something living

and human;

Then, as if filled with the spirit, and wrapt in a

vision prophetic,

Baring his hoary head, the excellent Elder of Plymouth

Said, "Let us pray!" and they prayed, and thanked the Lord and took courage Mournfully sobbed the waves at the base of the rock, and above them

Bowed and whispered the wheat on the hill of death, and their kindred

Seemed to awake in their graves, and to join in the prayer that they uttered.

Sun-illumined and white, on the eastern verge of the ocean

Gleamed the departing sail, like a marble slab in a graveyard:

Buried beneath it lay for ever all hope of escaping.

mine for protection.

Float, O hand of cloud, and vanish away in the ether!

Roll thyself up like a fist, to threaten and daunt me; I heed not

Either your warning or menace, or any omen of evil!

There is no land so sacred, no air so pure and so wholesome,

As is the air she breathes, and the soil that is pressed by her footsteps.

Here for her sake will I stay, and like an invisible presence

Hover around her for ever, protecting, supporting her weakness!

Yes! as my foot was the first that stepped on this rock at the landing,

So, with the blessing of God, shall it be the last at the leaving!"

Meanwhile the Master alert, but with dignified air and important, Scanning with watchful eye the tide and the wind and the weather,

of an Indian,

Watching them from the hill; but while they spake with each other,

Pointing with outstretched hands, and saying, "Look!" he had vanished.

So they returned to their homes; but Alden lingered a little,

Musing alone on the shore, and watching the wash of the billows

Round the base of the rock, and the sparkle and flash of the sunshine,

Like the Spirit of God, moving visibly over the

waters.

VI. PRISCILLA.

Turs for a while he stood, and mused by the shore of the ocean,

Thinking of many things, and most of all of Priscilla;

And as if thought had the power to draw to itself, like the loadstone,

Whatsoever it touches, by subtle laws of its nature,

Lo! as he turned to depart, Priscilla was standing beside him.

"Are you so much offended, you will not speak to me?" said she.

"Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, when you were pleading

Warmly the cause of another, my heart, impul

sive and wayward, Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful.perhaps of decorum?

Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, for saying

What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never unsay it;

For there are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion,

That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble

Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret,

Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.

Yesterday I was shocked, when I heard you speak of Miles Standish,

Praising his virtues, transforming his very defects into virtues,

Praising his courage and strength, and even his fighting in Flanders,

As if by fighting alone you could win the heart of

a woman,

Quite overlooking yourself and the rest, in exhalting your hero.

Therefore I spake as I did, by an irresistible impulse.

You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the friendship between us,

Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily broken!"

Thereupon answered John Alden, the scholar, the friend of Miles Standish:

"I was not angry with you, with myself alone I was angry,

Seeing how badly I managed the matter I had in my keeping."

"No!" interrupted the maiden, with answer prompt and decisive:

"No: you were angry with me, for speaking so frankly and freely.

It was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the fate of a woman

Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless,

Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence.

Hence is the inner life of so many suffering

Women

Sunless and silent and deep, like subterrauean rivers

Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, unseen, and unfruitful,

Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and profitless murmurs." Thereupon answered John Alden, the young man, the lover of women: "Heaven forbid it, Priscilla; and truly they seem to me always

More like the beautiful rivers that watered the garden of Eden.

More like the river Euphrates, through deserts of Havilah flowing!

Filling the land with delight, and memories sweet of the garden!"

"Ah, by these words I can see," again interrupted the maiden,

"How very little you prize me, or care for what I am saying,

When from the depths of my heart, in pain and with secret misgiving,

Frankly I speak to you, asking for sympathy only and kindness,

Straightway you take up my words, that are plain and direct and in earnest,

Turn them away from their meaning, and anewer with flattering phrases.

This is not right, is not just, is not true to the best that is in you;

For I know and esteem you, and feel that your nature is noble,

Lifting mine up to a higher, a more ethercal level.

Therefore I value your friendship, and feel it

If you say aught that implies I am only as one

perhaps the more keenly

among many,

If you make use of those common and complimentary phrases

Most men think so fine, in dealing and speaking with women,

But which women reject as insipid, if not as insulting."

Mute and amazed was Alden; and listened and looked at Priscilla,

Thinking he never had seen her more fair, more divine in her beauty.

He who but yesterday pleaded so glibly the cause of another,

Stood there embarrassed and silent, and seeking in vain for an answer.

So the maiden went on, and little divined or imagined

What was at work in his heart, that made him so awkward and speechless.

"Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things

Keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred professions of friendship. It is no secret I tell you, nor am I ashamed to declare it:

I have liked to be with you, to see you, to speak with you always.

So I was hurt at your words, and a little affronted to hear you

Urge me to marry your friend, though he were the Captain Miles Standish.

For I must tell you the truth: much more to me is your friendship

Than all the love he could give, were he twice the hero you think him."

Then she extended her hand, and Alden, who eagerly grasped it,

Felt all the wounds in his heart, that were aching and bleeding so sorely,

Healed by the touch of that hand, and he said, with a voice full of feeling:

"Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship

Let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest, and dearest!"

Casting a farewell look at the glimmering sail

of the May-Flower,

Distant, but still in sight, and sinking below the horizon,

Homeward together they walked, with a strange indefinite feeling,

That all the rest had departed and left them alone in the desert.

But, as they went through the fields in the blessing and smile of the sunshine, Lighter grew their hearts, and Priscilla said very archly:

Now that our terrible Captain has gone in pursuit of the Indians,

Where he is happier far than he would be commanding a household,

You may speak boldly, and tell me of all that happened between you

When you returned last night, and said how ungrateful you found me." Thereupon answered John Alden, and told her the whole of the story,-

of Miles Standish. Whereat the maiden smiled, and said, between laughing and earnest,

"He is a little chimney, and heated hot in a moment!"

But as he gently rebuked her, and told her how much he had suffered.-

How he had even determined to sail that day in the May-Flower,

And had remained for her sake on hearing the dangers that threatened,

All her manner was changed, and she said with a faltering accent,

"Truly I thank you for this: how good you have been to me always!"

Thus as a pilgrim devout, who toward Jerusa

THE MARCH OF MILES STANDISHI. MEANWHILE the stalwart Miles Standish was marching steadily northward, Winding through forest and swamp, and along the tread of the sea-shore,

All day long, with hardly a halt, the fire of his anger

Burning and crackling within, and the sulphurous odour of powder.

Seeming more sweet to his nostrils than all the scents of the forest,

Silent and moody he went, and much he revolved his discomfort!

He who was used to success, and to easy victories always,

Thus to be flouted, rejected, and laughed to scorn by a maiden,

Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the friend whom most he trusted!

Ah! 'twas too much to be borne, and he fretted and chafed in his armour!

"I alone am to blame," he muttered, "for mine was the folly.

What has a rough old soldier, grown grim and gray in the harness,

Used to the camp and its ways, to do with the wooing of maidens?

'Twas but a dream,-let it pass,-let it vanish like so many others!

What I thought was a flower is only a weed, and is worthless;

Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw it away, and henceforward

Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and woer of dangers?"

Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry defeat and discomfort,

While he was marching by day or lying at night in the forest,

Looking up at the trees, and the constellations beyond them.

After a three days' march he came to an Indian encampment

Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea and the forest;

Women at work by the tents, and the warriors horrid with war-paint,

Seated about a fire, and smoking and talking together:

proach of the white men,

Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and sabre and musket,

Straightway leapt to their feet, and two from among them advancing,

Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs as a present;

Friendship was in their looks, but in their hearts there was hatred.

Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers gigantic in stature,

Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, king of Bashan;

One was Pecksout named, and the other was called Wattawamat.

Round their necks were suspended their knives in scabbards of wampum,

Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as sharp as a needle.

Other arms had they none, for they were cunning and crafty.

"Welcome English!" they said- these words they had learned from the traders

Touching at times on the coast, to barter and chaffer for peltries.

Then in their native tongue they began to parley with Standish,

Through his guide and interpreter, Hobomok, friend of the white man,

Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for muskets and powder,

Kept by the white man, they said, concealed, with the plague in his cellars,

Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the red man!

But when Standish refused, and said he would give them the Bible,

Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast and to bluster.

Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride in front of the other,

And, with a lofty demeanour, thus vauntingly spake to the Captain:

"Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of the Captain,

Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the brave Wattawamat

Is not afraid at the sight. He was not born of a woman,

But on a mountain, at night, from an oak-tree riven by lightning,

Forth he sprang at a bound, with all his weapons about him,

Shouting, Who is there here to fight with the brave Wattawamat?'

Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the the blade on his left hand,

Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face on the handle.

Saying, with bitter expressions, and look of sinister meaning:

I have another at home, with the face of a man on the handle;

By and by they shall marry; and there will be plenty of children!"

Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, in sulting Miles Standish :

While with his fingers he patted the knife that hung at his bosom,

Drawing it half from his sheath, and plunging it back, as he muttered,

"By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha! but shall speak not!

This is the mighty Captain the white men have sent to destroy us!

He is a little man; let him go and work with the women!"

Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and figures of Indians

Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in

the forest,

Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their bow-strings,

Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of their ambush.

But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated them smoothly;

So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days of the fathers.

But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt, and the insult,

All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston de Standish,

Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples,

Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching his knife from its scabbard, Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage

Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiend-like fierceness upon it.

Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop,

And, like a flurry of snow on the whisting wind of December,

Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery arrows.

Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud

came the lightning:

Out of the lightning thunder; and death unseen ran before it.

Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp and in thicket,

Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the brave Wattamamat,

Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift had a bullet

Passed through his brain, and he fell with both hands clutching the greensward, Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land of his fathers.

There on the flowers of the meadow the warriors, lay, and above them, Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, friend of the white man,

Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stalwart Captain of Plymouth:

"Pecksuot bragged very loud of his courage, his strength, and his stature,

Mocked the great Captain, and called him a little man; but I see now

Big enough have you been to lay him speechless before you!"

Thus the first battle was fought and won by the stalwart Miles Standish,

When the tidings thereof were brought to the village of Plymouth,

And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wattawamat

Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was a church and a fortress,

All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, and took courage.

Only Priscilla averted her face from this spectre

of terror,

Thanking God in her heart that she had not married Miles Standish:

Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming home from his battles,

He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and reward of his valour.

VIII.

THE SPINNING-WHEEL.

MONTH after month passed away, and in Autumn the ships of the merchants

Came with kindred and friends, with cattle and corn for the Pilgrims.

All in the village was peace; the men were intent on their labours.

Busy with hewing and building, with gardenplot and with merestead,

Busy with breaking the glebe, and mowing the grass in the meadows,

Searching the sea for its fish, and hunting the deer in the forest.

All in the village was peace; but at times the rumour of warfare

Filled the air with alarm, and the apprehension of danger.

Bravely the stalwart Miles Standish was scouring the land with his forces,

Waxing valiant in fight and defeating the alien armies,

Till his name had become a sound of fear to the nations.

Anger was still in his heart, but at times the remorse and contrition

Which in all noble natures succeed the passionate outbreak,

Came like a rising tide, that encounters the rush of a river,

Staying its current awhile, but making it bitter and brackish.

Meanwhile Alden at home had built him a new habitation,

Solid, substantial, of timber rough-hewn from the firs of the forest,

Wooden-barred was the door, and the roof was covered with rushes;

Latticed the windows were, and the windowpanes were of paper,

Oiled to admit the light, while wind and rain were excluded.

There too he dug a well, and around it planted an orchard:

Still may be seen to this day some trace of the well and the orchard.

Close to the house was the stall, where, safe and secure from annoyance,

Raghorn, the snow-white steer, that had fallen to Alden's allotment

In the division of cattle, might ruminate in the night-time

Over the pastures he cropped, made fragrant by sweet pennyroyal.

Oft when his labour was finished, with eager feet would the dreamer

Follow the path-way that ran through the woods to the house of Priscilla,

Led by illusions romantic and subtile deceptions of fancy,

Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the semblance of friendship.

Ever of her he thought, when he fashioned the walls of his dwelling;

Ever of her he thought, when he delved in the

soil of his garden;

Ever of her he thought, when he read in his Bible on Sunday

Praise of virtuous women, as she is described in the Proverbs,

How the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her always,

How all the days of her life she will do him good, and not evil,

How she seeketh the wool and the flax and worketh with gladness.

How she layeth her hand to the spindle and holdeth the distaff,

How she is not afraid of the snow for herself or her household,

Knowing her household are clothed with the scarlet cloth of her weaving!

So as she sat at her wheel one afternoon in Autumn,

Alden, who opposite sat, and was watching her dexterous fingers,

As if the thread she was spinning were that of his life and his fortune.

After a pause in their talk, thus spake to the sound of the spindle:

"Truly, Priscilla," he said, "when I see you spinning and spinning,

Still at the face of the speaker, her arms uplifted in horror;

But John Alden, upstarting, as if the barb of the

arrow

Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed in a moment:

You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beautiful Spinner."

Here the light foot on the treadle grew swifter and swifter; the spindle

Uttered an angry snarl, and the thread snapped short in her fingers;

While the impetuous speaker, not heeding the mischief, continued.

"You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, the queen of Helvetia ;

She whose story I read at a stall in the streets of Southampton,

Who, as she rode on her palfrey, o'er valley and meadow and mountain,

Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff fixed to her saddle.

She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed into a proverb.

own, and had sundered

Once and for ever the bonds that held him bound as a captive.

Wild with excess of sensation, the awful delight of his freedom,

Mingled with pain and regret, unconscious of what he was doing,

Clasped, almost with a groan, the motionless form of Priscilla,

Pressing her close to his heart, as for ever his own, and exclaining:

"Those whom the Lord hath united, let no man put them asunder!"

Even as rivulets twain, from distant and separate sources,

Seeing each other afar, as they leap from the rocks, and pursuing

Each one its devious path, but drawing nearer and nearer,

Rush together atlast, at their trysting-place in the forest;

wheel shall no longer

Hum in the house of the farmer, and fill its chambers with music.

Then shall the mothers, reproving, relate how it
was in their childhood,
Praising the good old times, and the days of
Priscilla the spinner!"

Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful
Puritan maiden,

Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him

whose praise was the sweetest,

Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of her spinning,

Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the fiattering phrases of Alden;

"Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for housewives.

Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of husbands.

Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind it, ready for knitting;

Then who knows but hereafter, when fashions have changed and the manners, Fathers may talk to their sons of the good old times of John Alden!"

Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his hands she adjusted,

He sitting awkwardly there, with his arms extended before him,

She standing graceful, erect, and winding the thread from his fingers,

Sometimes chiding a little his clumsy manner of holding,

Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled expertly

Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares-for how could she help it?

Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in his body.

Lo! in the midst of this scene, a breathless. messenger entered,

Bringing in hurry and heat the terrible news from the village.

Yes; Miles Standish was dead!-an Indian had brought them the tidings,Slain by a poisoned arrow, shot down in the front of the battle,

Into an ambush beguiled, cut off with the whole of his forces:

All the town would be burned, and all the people be murdered!

Such were the tidings of evil that burst on the hearts of the hearers,

Silent and statue-like stood Priscilla, her face looking backward

channels,

Coming in sight of each other, then swerving and flowing asunder,

Parted by barriers strong, but drawing nearer and nearer

Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the other.

IX.

THE WEDDING-DAY.

FORTH from the curtain of clouds, from the tent of purple and scarlet,

Issued the sun, the great High-Priest, in his garments resplendent,

Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, on his forehead,

Round the hem of his robe the golden bells and pomegranates..

Blessing the world he came, and the bars of vapour beneath him

Gleamed like a grate of brass, and the sea at his feet was a laver!

This was the wedding-morn of Priscilla the Puritan maiden.

Friends were assembled together; the Elder and Magistrate also

Graced the scene with their presence, and stood like the Law and the Gospel,

One with the sanction of earth, and one with the blessing of heaven.

Simple and brief was the wedding, as that of Ruth and of Boaz.

Softly the youth and the maiden repeated the words of betrothal,

Taking each other for husband and wife in the Magistrate's presence.

After the Puritan way, and the laudable custom of Holland.

Fervently then, and devoutly, the excellent Elder of Plymouth

Prayed for the hearth and the home, that were founded that day in affection,

Speaking of life and of death, and imploring

divine benedictions.

Lo! when the service was ended, a form appeared on the threshold,

Clad in armour of steel, a sombre and sorrowful figure!

Why does the bridegroom start and stare at the strange apparition?

Why does the bride turn pale, and hide her face upon his shoulder?