SOLDIER RIGDALE

"As if he knew the place and held he had the right to come there."

Soldier Rigdale

·HOW HE SAILED IN THE "MAYFLOWER"·
·AND HOW HE SERVED MILES STANDISH·
BY
Beulah Marie Dix
AUTHOR OF "HUGH GWYETH: A ROUNDHEAD CAVALIER"
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY REGINALD B. BIRCH
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1899
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1899,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

Contents

List of Illustrations

SOLDIER RIGDALE

CHAPTER I
PLAYING WITH POWDER

WITH the approach of sunset, the wind that all day had ruffled the waves to white edges died down, till there was left on the water only a long, heaving motion, that rudely swayed the old ship Mayflower. One moment from her broad deck could be seen the steel-like gleam of the fresh-water pond on the distant beach; the next moment, as the ship rolled between the waves, the shore presented nothing but solid sand dunes and shrubby pine trees. But always overhead the sky, athwart which the yards, bulging with the furled sails, were raking, remained the same,—a level reach of thick gray that, as twilight drew on, seemed to brood closer over earth and ocean.

How those yards seesawed up and down with the rolling of the ship, and the mastheads, they dipped too, quite as if they might pitch down upon a body! Miles Rigdale, standing with legs craftily planted and head thrown well back, stared and stared at their measured movement till, dizzy with the feeling that the great spars were tottering loose, he was glad to straighten his aching neck once more.

"Did you see a goose, all roasted, flying for your mouth?" Francis Billington called from the waist of the ship, where he perched jauntily upon the bulwark.

Sauntering from his place near the companion way, Miles halted beside the speaker; not that he had a great liking for Francis Billington, but he was a sociable lad, who must talk to some one, and, as the bleak air had driven the women and children into the great cabin, while the men were absent,—the leaders conferring in the roundhouse and the lesser men seeking firewood on shore,—he could for the moment find no comrade save young Billington.

The latter was an unprepossessing lad, stunted and small for his fourteen years, with elfish eyes which he now turned sharply on Miles. "I take it, Jack Cooke is ill, and Giles Hopkins has packed you about your business, that you've come to spend the time with me," he suggested disagreeably.

"I take it, maybe you've spoke the truth," Miles answered unruffled, as he propped his chin on his fists and braced his elbows against the bulwark.

Gazing thus northward, he could see all about him green hills, wooded to the water's edge, now higher, now lower, as the ship mounted upon the waves, and the strip of sand beach, off which rode the bobbing longboat. "I wish my father had taken me with him when they went to fetch the wood," Miles broke out at that sight; "it's weeks and weeks since I set foot on land."

"Pooh! I've been ashore thrice already," bragged Francis, setting one arm akimbo, though he took good care to grip the shrouds tightly with the other hand, for the bulwark was not the safest of perches.

Miles tried to swallow down his envy, but he could not help saying, with a touch of triumph: "Anyhow, you saw no savages, and my father saw 'em when he went exploring with Captain Standish,—six Indians and a dog, he saw."

"So did my father," Francis sought to crush him; but Miles, declaring sudden truce, was asking, with civil interest: "You did not see any lions when you went ashore, did you, Francis?"

"N—no, but Ned Dotey thought he heard one roar the other night."

"Father would not take our mastiff Trug on land lest they kill him. Trug would give 'em a fight for it, though. But he couldn't fight the serpents; nobody could. Did you know, Francie, there's a serpent here in America,—they call it the rattlesnake,—and if it but breathe on you, you die presently."

"How do you know?" asked Francis, awed, but incredulous.

"My father read it in a book about plantations in Virginia. Maybe the serpents lie close in cold weather, though, so you did not see them." Miles was silent a long instant, while he gazed fixedly at the mysterious shore yonder, where all these rarities were to be met with. "The trees do not look like our English trees," he said, half to himself, "but I'd fain go in among them. Perhaps you found conies there, Francis? There were a plenty of them on the common at home; Trug and I used to chase them, and 'twas brave sport."

"Mayhap if you had Trug with you, you could start some here," suggested Francis. "Tell you, Miles, you beg your father let you go ashore to-morrow, and I'll go too, and we'll seek for conies together. Will you?"

"'Tis no use," Miles answered, scowling straight ahead.

"Why not?"

"Father says I cannot go," the boy blurted out. "I answered him saucily this morning, and he said for that I should not stir foot off the ship for a week. I think—I think he might let me go ashore. Along the first I was coughing, so my mother said I must not venture in the boat; and then my sister Dolly was ailing, and I must stay to bear her company; and then it stormed; and now he will not let me go. And I am so weary of this ship!"

"I'd not bear such usage from any man," Francis boasted grandly. "If 'twere my daddy treated me so harshly, I'd tell him to his face 'a' was a sour old curmudgeon, and—"

"You need not talk so of my father," Miles interrupted sullenly, though he held his eyes fixed upon the shore line, not on the speaker. It was hard, while he looked toward the land of wonders, still unknown to him, to think quite kindly of the father who had arbitrarily shut him out from the enjoyment of it. "If you miscall him so again, Francis, I'll fight you," he added, conscience-stricken, in the hope of making amends for the disloyalty of his thoughts.

Francis bent his sharp eyes on his companion, but did not take up the challenge; indeed, a less discreet lad than he might have considered an instant before coming to fisticuffs with Miles Rigdale. The boy, for his scant eleven years, was of a proper height, with straight back and sturdy limbs, a stocky, yet not clumsy, little figure, that promised a vigorous stature when he came to man's age. His deeply tanned face, that was lightly sprinkled with brown freckles, was square and resolute; his blue eyes were very level and honest; and his tousled brown hair tumbled about his forehead in a way to make more women than his mother think him a bonny boy. For the rest, he was clad humbly enough in doublet and breeches of dark gray frieze, with long gray stockings and stout shoes; he wore neither cloak nor hat, and his clenched fists, that now rested firmly on the bulwark, were bare and chapped red by the wind.

It was the sight of the aggressive fists that made Francis use a different tone: "You're a pretty comrade, Miles, to fly out at me so."

"You may leave my father in peace, then."

"Perhaps you'd wish me to leave you in peace too. I know Goodman Rigdale has forbid his little son speak to me."

"I'm still speaking to you, am I not?" answered Miles, and bent to adjust one of his shoes, so Francis could not see his face; those last words had hit dangerously near.

"But you'll show me a clean pair of heels very speedily," sneered his companion, "for yonder the boat with your good father is putting off from shore, and when he comes—"

"That's how the wind blows, is it?" struck in a new voice close at hand. Looking over his shoulder, Miles saw, lounging on a coil of rope by the foremast, a certain Edward Lister, one of the servants of Master Stephen Hopkins. He was a slim, dark fellow of some twenty years, whom Miles admired for a tall swaggerer, because he always wore his red cap rakishly on one side, and, since the rules about lighting tobacco aboard ship were strict, was ever chewing at a long pine splinter instead of a pipe. "So if your father catch you with Master Billington here, he'll swinge you soundly, eh, Miles Rigdale?" he asked, with his mouth quite grave, but a glancing mockery in his black eyes. "Better show us how briskly you can run into the cabin."

Miles ostentatiously leaned his shoulders against the bulwark and crossed one leg over the other, as if he thought to finish the afternoon in that position. Shifting round thus, his gaze travelled beyond his companions to the high quarter-deck, where he spied several men trudging forth from the roundhouse. "Has the conference broken off?" he asked, forgetting in his curiosity that he was angry with both Francis and Ned Lister.

"How else?" the latter answered dryly, and, rising to his feet, sauntered over to the two boys. "D'ye think they would confer without the great Master Hopkins? And he quit the roundhouse long since. Wearied out, doubtless, with such vigorous labor. It has taken them an hour to determine no more than to send forth a gang to-morrow and try a third time for a place where we may settle."

"Another exploration? Is my father to go on it, do you know?" Miles questioned.

"They won't let any but the great folk have a hand therein; daddy said 'twould be so," commented Francis.

"True enough," scoffed Lister; "the Governor, and Captain Standish, Master Bradford, Master Winslow, Master Hopkins, and—the worshipful Master Edward Dotey."

"Aha!" jeered Francis. "They're taking old Hopkins's other man Dotey along, and Ned Lister is jealous of him."

"Hold your tongue!" cried Lister, catching the lad by the scruff of the neck, "else I'll heave you over the bulwark."

Francis twisted up his face and opened his mouth in a prodigious, dry-eyed howl, which would have set Miles laughing, had he not been intent just then upon the approaching boat. He could see her visibly growing larger, as she bounded nearer and nearer over the swell of the water, and each moment he recalled more distinctly in what terms his father had forbidden him have to do with "that Satanish brood of the Billingtons." Miles shuffled one foot uneasily; perhaps he really ought to go into the cabin now and see how his sick friend, Jack Cooke, was faring.

He turned away and had idled a few paces along the deck, when Francis, who had been suffered wrest out of Lister's hold, called after him: "Ah, Miles daren't let his father find him with me. I knew so."

"It's not so, neither," Miles flung back, and made a great show of stopping by the mainmast, where he stood gazing down the open hatchway which led to those cabins that were in the depth of the hold. "Aren't you coming with me, Francis?" he asked presently.

The other, quite undeceived, came snickering up to him: "Have no fear; I'll take myself off ere your father come. Sure, you're a stout-hearted one, Miles."

"You're a pretty fellow to talk of courage," Miles was goaded into replying, "after the way you howled out but now. You might have known Ned Lister'd do you no hurt."

"No doubt you'd not have been afraid," his tormentor scoffed. "You're not afraid of anybody save your father."

"So are you, if you told the truth of it," Miles took him up. "You'd not have Goodman Billington hear you vaporing so for all the silver crowns in England, and if Goodwife Billington came by and heard you, she'd cuff your ears smartly."

Francis's sallow face reddened. "Much she would!" he said angrily. "I'll show you I be no milksop to stand in fear of my father and mother. Maybe now you think I'd not dare to—" he paused, his eyes half-closed, while he tried to concoct some peculiarly wicked sounding project—"to take some of my father's gunpowder and make squibs?" he concluded, with a triumphant look at his companion.

"No, I don't think you dare," Miles answered stolidly.

"Come, then, I'll show you," the other cried, and headed for the companion way that descended beneath the quarter-deck.

Four steps down, and, passing through a narrow door, they entered into the stifle and stir of the "great" or main cabin. On every hand murmured the ceaseless confusion that always filled the straitened space: underfoot, sometimes with fretful wrangling, children were at play; women were passing to and from their cabins, or dressing their meat for the evening meal at the long table; upon the benches several sick men, whose heavy voices were audible through the shriller tones of those about them, sat together in talk. Over all, the brightness from the narrow skylights fell wanly, so the corners of the low apartment were dusky with thick shadows, and the dim outline of the great timbers overhead, and the slits of doors into the double tier of little cabins adjoining, could only just be made out.

Miles was glad of the half light, for he knew well that if his mother should chance to be there and see him with Francis, she would make a pretext of some task to call him to her. He caught sight of her now, as she stood by the table in speech with Constance Hopkins, and, almost treading on Francis's heels in his hurry, he slipped into the Billingtons' cabin.

It was the veriest closet of a room in which he found himself, black, save for a glint of sickly light that crept through an opening in the door, by which Miles contrived presently to discern the unmade bunk along the wall, the mattress, still spread out upon the floor, and the iron kettle and other vague household stuff that littered untidily the narrow space. Comparing it with his father's ordered cabin, he recalled his mother's indignant comment to Mistress Hopkins, that Ellen Billington was a poor, thriftless body, who would better be tidying her quarters than gossiping with her neighbors.

"Now you'll see what I dare, Master Miles," Francis broke in, as, with much panting, he dragged from beneath the bunk a small keg. "This is gunpowder, if you be not afraid of the sight of it."

"It does not take much courage to touch gunpowder," said Miles, bending forward from the bunk, where he had seated himself, and plunging his fist into the keg. "Let's see your squibs, Francis."

Young Billington stretched himself on his stomach and, grubbing once more beneath the bunk, drew out a fistful of rustling papers. "These are leaves I tore from a jest book of daddy's," he bragged. "No doubt you won't believe I durst."

Miles made no reply; after all, he scarcely cared to prolong his differences with a boy who had such a delightful plaything as a keg of powder. "Let me make a squib too, Francie," he begged, squatting down on the mattress beside his host.

For a space there was silence, while, with some hard breathing, the two, guided more by touch than by any sight they had in the dark cabin, labored industriously. Blacker and blacker it grew all round them, till they struck their hands together as they groped in the keg, when a ray of faint yellow light, that must fall from a lantern in the great cabin, stole through the door.

Now they could see how they were faring at their work, and Francis, who had laid his handfuls of powder on the papers and folded them quite dexterously, laughed in provoking fashion at Miles, who, new to this game, had spilt the powder and failed to make his papers stay folded. "It's all very well," the boy retorted irritably, as one of his painfully made squibs, bursting open, scattered powder between his knees, "but after you've made these mighty squibs what else do you do?"

"Why, I'll light a bit of match," said Francis, scrambling to his feet, "and then we'll touch 'em off."

Miles jumped up delightedly, and, reasoning that a really satisfactory squib should be set off in darkness, took from the bunk a blanket which he fastened by two nails across the opening in the door.

Meantime Francis had struck his father's flint and steel together, till at length he succeeded in catching a spark upon the piece of "match" or twisted tow steeped in saltpetre. Miles could see the little red point shimmering in the dark and, picking up the squibs, he moved warily toward it. "Gi' me a squib," came Francis's voice, close at his feet. More accustomed to the dimness now, Miles could make out the boy's crouching figure and saw him lean far forward with one arm outstretched to touch off the powder.

Then he felt Francis crowd up against his knees, and instinctively he drew back so his own body was pressed against the wall. Out of the dark on the floor, right at his feet, started a little flicker of flame which, with a sudden whishing sound, leaped up, a broad, bluish puff of fire, almost in his eyes; then, before the exclamation had left his lips, died sizzling away.

"That was brave, wasn't it?" spoke Francis, in a rather quavering voice. "You can touch off one now."

"With his arm up to shut out the glare of the lanterns."

Miles eagerly seized the match and, setting it to a squib, flung the twisted paper a pace from him. The same whiz, burst, sizzle, but this time he lost the keen pleasure in a sudden hideous thought that, even as the squib left his hand, came over him. "Francis," he cried, before the flame died down, "is this safe, think you? Say the powder in the keg took fire?"

"Pshaw! You're afraid; I knew you'd be," replied Francis, his own courage quite restored.

Thereupon Miles lit a third squib to show his fearlessness, and then together they set off the remaining two. "That's the last, and I've no more paper," sighed Francis, and Miles echoed the sigh.

They were sitting now on the edge of the bunk; the cabin seemed very black to their eyes, still dazzled with the last flash, and the air was hot and heavy with the pungent odor of burnt powder. Miles sniffed it contentedly. "This is what 'twould be like in a great battle," he began. "Sometime I mean to be a soldier and have a musket. Did you ever shoot with a musket, Francis?"

"No, but I've shot off a fowling piece," answered the other. He clambered upon the bunk, groping audibly in the dark, and presently dropped down again beside his companion with something long and slender and heavy in his arms. "Look you, Miles, here's daddy's fowling piece now," he said exultantly. "What say if I shoot her off?"

"'Twould make a mighty big noise in so small a room," Miles answered longingly.

"Give me the match, then."

Later Miles remembered clearly how Francis had sprung to his feet at the word, but after that all was a confusion of dire noises,—a rending crash, then a sound of women screaming, of children crying, and of men running with clattering footsteps across the great cabin. Through it all he felt the weight of Francis Billington, who had pitched back against him, and he saw a little spurt of yellow fire that licked along the boards. Though he did not remember snatching a blanket from the bunk, one was in his hand, and he was down upon the floor, smothering the flames that would press out beyond the edges. A powder keg was somewhere near, he recollected, and he beat out one little jet of flame with his hand, that smarted fiercely.

It all must have taken a long, long time, but still the women screamed, and the heavy footsteps had only just reached the door. The latch rattled beneath a rough hand, the light streamed into the cabin, and Miles dropped back against the bunk, with his arm up to shut out the glare of the lanterns, and the sight, too, of the angry faces in the doorway. "Francis, Francis," he found himself saying, in a poor whisper that he realized was not meant for Francis Billington's ears, "we must 'a' killed some one."

CHAPTER II
THE NAME OF MILES

IN the great cabin two huge, smoky lanterns, that swayed from the beams overhead, cast blending white circles in the middle space, while the corners still remained dusky. Somewhere, there in the dark, a woman was crying hysterically, and others, calmer, but with startled, white faces, were standing beyond the group of men, who were gathered round the door of the Billingtons' cabin. Miles saw about him all the faces, terrified or menacing, but it was blurrily, as in a dream. He kept telling himself it was all a dream, an ugly dream, and presently he would awake to find he had never gone with Francis Billington, and very glad he would be to awake so.

But the grasp on his neck—it was big John Alden, the cooper from Southampton, who had dragged him out into the great cabin—was real, and so, he now found, were the faces of the men who confronted him. The Elder, William Brewster, with his gray hair, and grave Governor Carver, he noted among them, with a hopeless feeling that all the majesty of the company was come thither to judge him. Close by, he heard Francis Billington crying, with tearful sobs, not dry howls alone, but Miles dropped his shamed eyes to the floor of the cabin and did not look at his companion. He heard Goodman Billington's rough voice, thick with abuse and threats against his son, and then he heard the Elder cut him short: "Peace now, friend. Maybe the lad is hurt."

Just then, from within the Billingtons' cabin, whence a light smoke still drifted, spoke a quick, deep voice: "Come you in and lend a hand, Alden. There is work for two needs despatch. The floor here is over shoe thick with powder."

"Ay, Captain Standish," the young man answered promptly, and loosed his hold on Miles's collar.

There was a little movement in the group of men, and Master Stephen Hopkins, stepping closer to the cabin door, peered in and spoke solemnly: "A full keg of powder broke open! 'Tis by the mercy of Heaven alone the ship was not blown into atoms."

"I did not have it in mind to blow up the ship," Miles faltered, raising his eyes. "I did but touch off a squib—because it would burn bravely." There the words choked in his throat, for, a little back from the other men, he caught sight of his father, and Goodman Rigdale's arms were folded, his heavy brows drawn close together, and his lips, beneath his beard, set in a way Miles knew of old. "I did not mean it," he repeated huskily, and, gazing at the floor again, began crushing a fold of his doublet in his hand.

About him there was questioning and answering, he knew, and he heard Francis whimper: "'Twas Miles. He touched off squibs, he did."

"Squibs do not make such a noise as that we heard," Governor Carver interrupted sternly.

"'Twas daddy's fowling piece. Miles Rigdale and I shot her off, and he—"

"Let Miles Rigdale rest," the Elder admonished. "Do you tell us of Francis Billington."

Bit by bit a fairly accurate story was drawn from the two boys, though by such slow and woful stages that before it was ended Captain Miles Standish and John Alden, with their hands all grimed with powder, came out from the cabin. Miles stole a fearful side-glance at the Low Country soldier, who, being trained in the brutal discipline of the camps, was likely to prove a harsher judge than the Elder or the Governor, but, to his relief, he saw the Captain halt beside Goodman Billington, to whom he growled out some pithy advice as to the expediency of keeping his powder covered up and out of reach of mischievous hands.

Miles took heart a little then, as much as he could take heart while he knew Goodman Rigdale was frowning in the background, and even ventured to look up when he heard Elder Brewster say, in a tone which a trace of amusement and much relief made almost kindly: "Well, well, 'twas no Guy Fawkes conspiracy, it seems, only the folly of two scatter-brained lads. Your Excellency scarce will set them in the bilboes?"

"Nay, I leave it to their fathers to teach them not to meddle with such tools in future," Governor Carver answered gravely; and thereupon, with a surly mutter or so from other fathers in the company as to what the two culprits deserved to get, the men scattered to weightier affairs.

As the group thinned, Miles was left face to face with his father, who, making a curt sign for him to come after, led the way to the door of the cabin. Miles felt queer and empty at the pit of his stomach, and his fingers trembled as he began unhooking his doublet, but he followed along bravely. His eyes were still downcast, and, as he stepped, he counted the planks in the flooring and tried to think of nothing but their number.

Out in the darkness of the forward deck his father gave him such punishment as he looked for,—a beating with a rope's end, so hard that Miles had to set his teeth tight and clench his hands to keep from crying. Once, in the midst, Goodman Rigdale stayed his arm, and in the instant's cessation Miles, standing in his shirt-sleeves, felt the wind from across the harbor strike cold on his hot flesh, that was quivering with the blows. "That is for that you near destroyed the ship," his father spoke, gravely and without anger. "Now I must flog you for that you disobeyed me, and had to do with one of those Billington imps."

The second whipping ended, Miles huddled on his doublet, stiffly and awkwardly, glad of the darkness that hid his face. Goodman Rigdale was speaking again: "And ere you lie down to-night, my son, remember to give thanks unto God that by His mercy He has preserved you from being cast into His presence with the deaths of all that are within this ship upon your soul."

Miles did not quite follow the words, but, with a sense that he was the chiefest of sinners, and with a keen realization that his back and sides were smarting, he gulped out an unsteady "Yes, sir," and blindly fled away.

Aft of the foremast, as he stumbled uncertainly, he ran against a woman, and at once he knew it was his mother. In an unformed way he was aware that she had been waiting to comfort him, and at each blow had suffered more than he. Her voice was quavering now, though she tried hard to keep her everyday tone: "Come, come down to the cabin now. Father has shot a bird, and I've made a broth to our supper. Come, deary, it is turning chill here."

Shaking off the hand she laid on his arm, Miles broke away and ran to the mainmast, where the hatchway yawned. Slipping and swinging on the steep ladder, he descended headlong; he was not going to his father's cabin, nor did he know whither he was going, only that he wanted to be by himself. On the orlop deck he halted an instant before passing down into the hold; below, there would be many people, while here, for the moment, he was alone. He stood blinking at the dim lantern that hung by the ladder, till slowly it grew blurry to his eyes, and, raising his bent arm, he hid his face.

It seemed only a moment before he heard someone come tramping up from the hold, and felt a hand on his shoulder. He was turned round; he had to look up; and he saw, standing over him, Master Hopkins, very grim and stern, as was his wont. "I am glad to see these tears of repentance, Miles Rigdale," he spoke severely.

Miles wriggled out of his hold. "I am not repentant," he cried. "I wish I had blown you up. Now you can go bid my father flog me again." With that he dodged the hand Hopkins put out to detain him, and, jumping over some coils of rope, scrambled away out of reach.

Clambering over the chests and kegs that were placed upon the orlop, he paused only when he reached the next cleared space, by the forward hatchway that led to the gunroom. There it was all dark, a comfortable, thick blackness, and, to make it safer and lonelier, he crept under a table that was stored among other household stuff.

For a moment he sat panting, and listened to the lap, lap of the waves upon the side of the ship and to his own heavy breathing, but he heard no sound of any one's pursuing him. Doubtless Master Hopkins had gone away to tell every one that he was crying and repentant, Miles tormented himself; no matter, he was never coming out to be jeered at and preached to; he would stay under the table forever, and he would not shed another tear to please them.

So he sat, rigid and still, and each moment grew more keenly aware that he was sore from his beating, that his head ached, and his burnt hand throbbed, and his heart was big with a great burden of shame. Of a sudden, in the stillness and dark, he heard a sob. Then he found it was himself, lying with his head buried in his arms against the crosspiece that braced the legs of the table, and crying helplessly.

He had lost track of the minutes, but he had lain there a long time, he knew, for his arms were numb with the pressure of the crosspiece against them, and his throat ached with much sobbing, when he caught the sound of a footstep on the planking of the orlop. At the same moment, light beat against his smarting eyelids, and, opening his eyes, he raised his head to look.

The edges of the table under which he crouched were silhouetted blackly against the yellow lantern-glow, which crept midway into his shelter. Following with his eyes along the light, he could see beyond the table the joinings of the planks of the floor, a bit of the ladder that led to the main deck, and by the ladder, in shadow as the lantern was raised, the lower part of a man's body.

Miles stared breathlessly at the commonplace leather shoes and kersey breeches,—all the rest the table hid from his view,—while he strove to hold back a sob that was halfway up his throat. It would out, but he tried to turn it into a sneeze, which ended in a mournful, indefinable gurgle.

Instantly the light of the lantern, swinging round, swept almost into his face, and a deep voice commanded: "Come out hither."

Miles sat up, tense and braced. "Is it you, Captain Standish?" he asked, in a small voice. Not that, to his knowledge, Miles Standish had ever hurt any one, but he was a brusque, peremptory man, reputed of a fiery temper; it was for this, probably, that Master Hopkins had sent him hither, as one fitted to deal out further punishment to such a criminal as Miles Rigdale.

"Come out, and you'll speedily find if 'tis I," Standish's voice rejoined grimly.

Miles rubbed his sleeve across his eyes, the rough frieze hurting them rarely, then dubiously crept from his shelter. The straight course was to crawl toward the light, but to go that way would land him squarely at the Captain's feet,—a last touch of ignominy that he could not endure. So he scrambled painfully over the crosspieces and round the table-legs, till he came out upon the open floor the width of the table-top from the enemy.

"It's naught but you, is it?" the Captain greeted him, and turned the lantern so the light fell full upon him.

The boy struggled hastily to his feet. "Ay, sir," he nodded, without speaking or looking up.

The other drew a step nearer. "You're one of the knaves who tried to blow up the Mayflower, are you not?" he questioned sternly. "Did you steal down here to fire the magazine and finish the work?"

"I—I did not go for to blow up the ship, sir," Miles pleaded, raising his eyes. With amazed relief, he saw that, for all his gruff tone, the Captain looked more amused than angry.

Standish must have taken closer note of him, too, for he asked abruptly: "You're John Rigdale's lad, are you not?"

"I am Miles Rigdale."

The lantern was lowered suddenly. "My namesake, are you? Do you not think, sirrah, you bear too good a name to drag it into a powder-burning matter such as this?"

"I do not hold it a good name," Miles burst out. "I would they had called me plain Jack."

"Wherefore, pray you?"

"Miles is no name at all," the boy hesitated, between shyness and the desire to vent a long-standing resentment. "It makes me think of the stone in our village that said: 'Thirteen miles to London.'"

"Tut, tut, lad! Have you no Latin?"

Miles slipped one hand under the edge of the table against which he leaned, and picked at a splinter he found there, while he stammered: "N—no, sir. There was no school in our village, and, had there been, my father could not spare me from the farm. I must help him, for I'm mighty strong for my years," he added gravely. "And I never want to go sit in a school, either. I am glad there will be no schools here in the plantation, not till I'm a man and can do as I will. I hold that is the best part of all in planting a colony, except the lions and the savages."

"And what do you think to do with the lions and savages, Miles Rigdale?"

"Fight 'em, sir."

Captain Standish chuckled softly in his beard. "You'll fight 'em, eh? 'Tis a great pity, in truth, no one has told you what name you bear. You should know that Miles in the Latin tongue signifies 'a soldier.'"

Miles forgot that his cheeks were tear-stained and his eyes swollen, and looked up happily into the speaker's face. "I am right glad of that," he announced. "'Tis a good enough name, after all." He was sorely tempted to ask the Captain if he had been named that after he proved himself a soldier in the wars, or if they named him first and he grew to it afterward, but he concluded that would be over-bold.

Though, after all, he began to doubt if Captain Standish were such a terrible body. He looked pleasant enough now, as he stood in the lantern light,—a stocky, square-shouldered man of some six and thirty years, with yellow-brown hair and beard, and eyes so deep set under his brows Miles could not tell their color. The linen bands at his neck and wrists were small and plain, and along the sides of his doublet of dark maroon kersey the rubbing of armor had worn down the cloth. He was not so fine a gentleman, doubtless, as young Master Edward Winslow, but he looked the man of war, through and through, and, moreover, he neither scolded nor preached at a small sinner; Miles began to be glad in his heart that he bore the same name as the Captain.

"So, after all, you're content to be named 'Soldier' Rigdale?" Standish suddenly read the expression of his face.

"'Tis a soldier that I mean to be," Miles confessed. "I like the smell of powder."

"So it seems," the Captain answered, in the dryest possible tone, and then, as Miles's cheeks began to burn, went on hastily: "Which was it, you or the Billington lad, put out the fire? We found the blanket on the floor of the cabin."

"Mayhap 'twas I. I do not recall it clearly."

The Captain reached out his hand, and, taking Miles by a fold of the doublet-sleeve, lifted his arm. "No doubt 'twas you," he said; "you've blistered your hand here."

"I know. It aches," Miles whispered, with a sudden husky dropping of his voice.

"You'd better go to your mother straightway and ask her to put oil on it; that will soon draw out the fire."

"I can't," Miles gulped. "I can never go out among the people again. When they all think I tried to blow them up,—and when every one will know I have been newly whipped. I shall stay here forever." His voice died down as he spoke the last: it did not sound manly, but uncommon silly.

"You'd get mighty hungry if you did," the soldier answered him coolly. "You're going to your mother now, my man. Run along with you. I've to go on down into the gunroom, but I'll light you up the ladder."

Miles gave a tremulous gasp of resignation, and scuffed slowly to the foot of the ladder, where he paused and smeared the back of his hand across his cheeks; then turned to his companion. "Captain Standish," he hesitated; then, as it was the only possible way of learning what he wished to know before he showed himself among the company, he blurted out desperately, "Will you tell me, is my face clean?"

Captain Standish looked down at him with a funny expression in his eyes. "I think 'twill serve in a half light, if you slip directly into your father's cabin."

"Thank you, sir," Miles answered; then added hastily, "You see, there was something flew into my eye, and one that did not know might think—I had been crying."

CHAPTER III
THIEVISH HARBOR

ONE sharp December afternoon, a week and a day after the Pilgrim leaders went forth the third time to seek a place for settlement, Love Brewster and his little brother Wrestling climbed down to the cabins beneath the main deck to visit their playmate, Dolly Rigdale. The cubby where Dolly and Miles and their father and mother had lived during the two months of the voyage over the sea and the five weeks of exploration that followed, was a dim box of a place, but the little boys liked to visit it, not only to talk with Dolly, who was nearer their age than most of the children in the company, but to see Trug and Solomon.

Trug was the big, grizzled mastiff, who had guarded the house and the cattle faithfully for so many years that even stern John Rigdale had not the heart to leave him to strangers; and Solomon, with the wise eyes of royal yellow, was the fat house-cat, whom Dolly had insisted on bringing with her to the new home.

"If it had been my pet, 'twould 'a' had to bide in England," Miles had told himself, in one bitter, jealous moment, of which he was justly ashamed. For, without question, Goodman Rigdale cared equally for his two children, only he held Miles, being a stubborn chip of manhood, needed frequent beatings, such as the Scriptures enjoined on good fathers to give their sons, whereas Dolly was just a little wench, with gray eyes like her mother, so she received very gentle whippings and triumphantly lugged Solomon on shipboard.

The sleek, striped creature lay beside her now, for Dolly, still ailing with her cough, was resting on the bunk beneath the blankets. Wrestling Brewster, a big-eyed, silent child, sat by her, and, sorry to tell, joined forces with the little girl in rumpling poor Solomon's fur. "You are the best pussy," Dolly purred meantime, and, either because of her flattery or because the warm blankets were comfortable, the cat made no movement to leave her.

Ordinarily Miles sniffed at the conversation of eight-year-olds, such as his sister, but this afternoon he gladly lingered in the cabin, for the accomplishments of the Brewster lads were amazing enough to lift them to the rank of companions. Both could jabber Dutch quite as fast as Miles could speak English, and Love, the talkative one, could tell wonderful stories of the queer Low Country city of Leyden, where all his short life had been spent. It was of Leyden he spoke now, sitting beside Miles on the turned-up mattress, where at night Goodman Rigdale and his son slept, and Miles, with a question here and there to draw out what he sought, listened again to the story of the Pilgrims.

Love had good reason to know it well, for his father, Elder Brewster, had been from the first one of the leaders of the little company. He had given all his substance to help the cause of that faith which the bishops of the great Established Church of England held it right to crush out; he had suffered imprisonment for the sake of that faith; and finally, that he and his friends might worship God as they thought best, had gone into exile in Holland.

There for twelve years the Pilgrim church held its own, though its members, for all their efforts to support themselves in that strange country, fared hardly and poorly. Good Deacon Fuller, the physician, had been glad to earn his living as a say or serge maker; Master William Bradford had been a maker of fustian; and the Elder had maintained his family and aided his poorer companions by teaching English to Danish and German gentlemen, and later by printing English books.

Love told also of Master Carver, the recently elected governor of the company, who had given his whole fortune to the Pilgrim cause; and he spoke of gallant Master Edward Winslow, who, travelling in the Low Countries with his newly married wife, had come to know and to respect the Pilgrim folk and finally to cast in his lot with theirs. And, best of all, Love could tell of Captain Standish.

There the boy turned to what Miles had been waiting to hear, and be sure that now he eagerly drank in each word: how the Captain came of a great family in Lancashire, where he had a vast estate which his kinsfolk had taken from him,—so Love had once heard him say to the Elder; how he had fought bravely against the wicked Spaniards, as far back as the time of Queen Bess, when Miles Standish was a very young man indeed; and how, of a sudden, he had come with his young wife and joined himself to the Pilgrims, why, none could say, for he was "not of our faith," Love gravely quoted the older people.

That last did not greatly displease Miles, perhaps because his own father was rather a Puritan than an ardent Separatist, as those were called who, like the Pilgrims of Leyden, broke off all communion with the Established Church. Goodman John Rigdale grumbled about the bishops and the vestments of the clergymen and other matters which Miles neither heeded nor comprehended, but, for all his grumbling, as often as the law insisted, he and his household went to church. One of the first and liveliest recollections of childhood which Miles kept, was of how the red light from the painted windows that his father hated used to shift along the dark oak of the old pews.

Lately, though, John Rigdale had spoken out too openly against the service book, and there had been a citation before the ecclesiastical court. Miles scarcely understood the matter, but he knew that Dun-face, the pet heifer, had been sold to pay a fine, and that their landlord, swearing that he was too good a Church of England man to suffer a pestilent Separatist hold a farm of him, had refused to renew the lease, bought long ago by Miles's grandfather, which now ran out.

Then had come Master Stephen Hopkins, the London tanner, whose first wife had been a distant cousin of John Rigdale's, and he had talked of the new country over seas, where a man might have land and a farm of his own for the asking and worship to please his conscience, not the king's bishops. Master Hopkins had already made up his mind to embark with the people from Leyden; he had met their agent, Master Cushman, and he was acquainted with some of the London merchants who had formed a partnership with the Leyden people, the Londoners to furnish money to pay the expenses of the long voyage, the Separatists to give themselves and their families to defend and till the plantation thus gained.

In the end, Master Hopkins's statements were so weighty that Goodman Rigdale followed his example. The stout farm horse and the cows and the pigs were all led away to market, and Dolly cried over each one; and Goodwife Rigdale, too, wept a little when most of the bits of furniture were sold. But Miles thought it all very merry and stirring,—the breaking up of the home he had known, the journey to Southampton, all amidst new sights and sounds, and the ship, and the long voyage over the sea, till the Mayflower dropped anchor off Cape Cod.

He was more than a bit weary of the voyage and the ship now, however, as he sat on the turned-up mattress in his father's stuffy little cabin. The dead air was cold without being bracing, and Miles broke short Love's discourse on the journey of the Leyden Pilgrims into England, by springing up and stamping his chilled feet.

"It is a shrewd cold day," said his companion. "See!" He puffed at the air, and his breath made a little white cloud. "Maybe we'd best go up on deck and run."

At that word the two older boys turned to the door, but Wrestling shook his head and, pressing closer to Dolly, whispered: "Before I go, I want that you show me the Indian basket."

Miles overheard, and delayed to draw from beneath the bunk the deal box in which the treasure was kept. Wrestling was so young that he seemed hardly more than a baby, and as a baby Miles had a kindly, protecting feeling for him; when he rose with the box he opened it so the little boy might have the first sight. Within lay a tiny basket all of silk grass, pictured on which in black and white were birds and flowers of a curious pattern.

"Did your father truly bring it from the Indians?" Love asked.

"He brought it home to me," Dolly explained proudly. "It was in an Indian house, and my father found it when he went ashore with Captain Standish. And so he brought it to me."

Wrestling touched the fragile thing gingerly. "I wish our father fought the Indians once," he murmured.

"It is better to be an Elder," Love rebuked him sternly; then added, lest Dolly's feelings be hurt, "though, to be sure, there can be but one Elder in a company. The rest must be fighting men, must they not, Miles?"

But Miles gave no heed; for just then the sound of soft footsteps made him glance to the open door, at which the light drifted in, and there, standing on the threshold, he saw his mother.

Years afterward, when he looked back, Miles realized Goodwife Rigdale had been a young woman then, not above thirty, but in those days it seemed to him she must be old, because she was his mother; he even wondered that she had not hair streaked with gray, like Mistress Brewster. Mothers were always old, he generalized rashly, just as they were always gentle-spoken and full of kindness; only that last judgment he revoked, after he came aboard the Mayflower and heard Goodwife Billington, a true London virago, rail at her sons and saw her cuff them.

But his own mother was not to be belittled by naming her with Ellen Billington; she was everything that was good and to be loved, even if she did not wear such a brave gown as Mistress Winslow, nor have such pink cheeks as Mistress Standish. Miles drew away from the bunk, against which he had been leaning, to make room for her to sit, though he did it awkwardly, because Love and Wrestling were looking.

"I'll bide a bit now with my little maid," she said, as she drew the blankets more closely about Dolly. "You'll want to be running up on deck now, I can guess, deary, and Love and Wrestling too, if Mistress Brewster will suffer it."

"Mother, is the shallop in sight?" Miles cried eagerly. For, since the exploring party sailed forth a week before, there had come so great a storm that hearts aboard the Mayflower were not a little anxious for their welfare.

"They've made out a sail to the southward, I heard the talk run. Go you and learn further, Miles. Your father will be on deck too."

Miles reddened a little; why would she speak as if he were a young boy, to need his father? "Come, lads," he said, in a very old tone, to hide his mortification, and led the way from the cabin. As he passed out at the door, he heard a sorrowful wail from Dolly: "O me! Mammy, can I not run about with them soon?"

But Miles forgot Dolly's woes and all, when he clambered into the bracing air of the deck, whither the most of the hale ones of the company had, like himself, bustled to watch the approaching shallop. Shreds of dappled cloud half obscured the east, but low in the west the sun was cold and yellow, and its light flecked the water and made the sail of the distant craft gleam like gold.

Miles stared till for very dazzle he could see no longer, then turned his gaze inboard, where it rested on the slender figure of a woman, who leaned against the mainmast. When the light got out of his eyes, he perceived it was Mistress Rose Standish, who, while he was still gazing on her, came to the bulwark beside him, but, without seeming to see him, stood looking toward the shallop.

Once and again Miles glanced up at her, thinking how bonny she was with the flush on her cheeks and her brown hair straying from beneath her hood across her forehead; and then he grew suddenly hot, for she chanced to look down, and their eyes met. He drew away bashfully and stared again at the shallop; the sun had now dropped lower, so the waves around it were sombre, but within the boat sparkled a gleam of light on metal armor. Miles almost thought to be able to distinguish the forms of the men, and presently their faces. "Yon is the Captain," he broke out, half aloud.

"Do you see him, too?" Mistress Standish spoke, as if he had addressed her.

"That's he, by the mast, with the steel corselet."

She looked down again, and the boy noted her eyes were moist, though she smiled as she said: "You seem to know the Captain very well, sir."

"I'd know him anywhere," Miles answered earnestly. "You understand, he was right kind to me."

Then he broke off speech, for the shallop was now fairly alongside, and the men in her were calling to those on shipboard greetings and questions and answers. Mistress Standish moved quickly toward the gangway, and Miles saw her meet the Captain, when he clambered up the ladder.

Next after him came Master William Bradford, and suddenly it struck with a shock on Miles's remembrance that Mistress Bradford was dead, drowned alongside the Mayflower on the very day after the shallop sailed, and her body carried away among the waves. Master Bradford, for all the weariness in his movements, looked cheerful and hopeful as he gained the deck, and his eyes went glancing over the women gathered there with such a certainty of meeting one that, child though he was, Miles realized something of the pity of it.

But after Elder Brewster had led Master Bradford away, the horror and the pity slipped quickly from Miles. Drawing over closer to the gangway ladder, he stood watching the rest of the shallop's company scramble to the deck, and, listening to every scrap of speech, was soon eager as any of the other boys in questioning the sailors and Hopkins's man, Dotey.

The minutes ran on till dim twilight had darkened upon the water, when at last, bursting with news, Miles clambered down again to Goodwife Rigdale in the cabin. "They've found a place for us to settle, mother," he announced, barely within the door.

Goodwife Rigdale hushed him with a finger on her lips; Dolly was asleep, so he must speak softly.

Miles curled himself up on the floor at his mother's feet, with his elbow on her knee, and whispered: "'Tis at a place called Thievish Harbor—"

"Nay, that's an ill name," commented the Goodwife.

"'Tis because a savage stole a harpoon from a ship's boat that once put in there to truck, so says Robert Coppin, the pilot. It lies across a great bay here, and there are fair green islands and many brooks and cleared land and tall trees. We are going thither, all of us, mother. The ship is to sail so soon as the wind favors. And if they like of it on further look, we'll go ashore and stay. I want to go ashore again," he ended wistfully; "the week's out that father said I must stay on the ship. Won't you beg him take me ashore first thing when we come thither, mother?"

The flickering light that reached them from the lantern hung outside the cabin door was blotted out then, as Goodman Rigdale himself came in. Miles dared ask no favors of him directly, however, but, scrambling to his feet, stood silent and unobtrusive, though he listened eagerly to all his father had to say of Thievish Harbor, which he called Plymouth. "So it is named on the maps that were drawn by Captain Smith," he said, to which Goodwife Rigdale answered quickly: "I am glad for the name. Do you not have in mind, John, how kindly the people at our English Plymouth dealt by us when we had to put in at their harbor?"

But this new Plymouth in America bore little resemblance to Plymouth in Devonshire, as Miles found, to his surprise, when he had his first sight of the place where the company was to settle. It was on the afternoon of the day succeeding the return of the shallop that, the wind at last favoring, the Mayflower steered her course for the bay of Plymouth. The sunshine was strong and clear, and the air mild, so Goodwife Rigdale suffered Dolly come up on deck, where, well wrapped in a cloak, she stood between her mother and Miles.

Others in plenty, all the passengers who could walk about, were watching for a glimpse of the new home, but Miles, in his eagerness, scarcely heeded his companions. He strained his eyes to see the headlands, brave with evergreen, loom higher and higher, and ran to question his friend, Giles Hopkins, who had been talking with the sailors, as to what they were. Giles explained that the one on the left was not the mainland, but a well-wooded point, and on the right yonder the farther of the two islands, with the trees, was where the exploring party had spent their Sabbath.

By the time Miles returned to his mother with the news, they were running in between the point and the islands, and presently, well within the harbor, they dropped anchor in a safe mooring ground. All about them were headlands and islands; far to the right, across the bay, rose a great hill; and just over opposite where the ship lay a broad space of open land, with high hills behind, could be made out.

"Yonder's where we'll settle," Miles assured his mother.

"I see no houses," protested Dolly. "I thought there would be cottages, maybe. Must we lie in the woods, mammy?"

"Nonsense! We'll build houses," scoffed Miles; he would have blushed to own that, half unconsciously, he, too, had cherished the fancy of seeing on the New England shore straggling streets and tiny cottages, as in old Plymouth.

"You'll build houses, Miles?" teased his sister.

"Father and I and all the men," the boy bragged. "Build them of great logs. Then in the spring will come a ship with horses and cows and sheep, and we'll have farms, just as we had at home."

"With a hedge round the dooryard?" Dolly questioned.

"Yes, and meadow-land and ploughed fields. We'll have all in order when the frost leaves the ground," Miles answered confidently.

Then he looked up at his mother, and was astonished to see that for once her eyes were not on her children, but on the empty shore over opposite. Her face was wistful, and it came on Miles that perhaps she was not as interested in the farm concerns as he, who was a man, so he said quickly: "And you can have a garden here, mother, full of rosemary and daffadowndillies, just as at home. Maybe you'll not have to labor so hard here," he added more vaguely, not quite understanding her silence.

She smiled a little then. "That's a good lad, Miles," she said, putting her arm about his shoulders; then she bade him go to his mates if he would, and she led Dolly back to the cabin.

Miles stood alone, gazing at the home-shore and wondering where his father's farm would lie. Still thinking on it, he was turning toward the hatchway, when he almost ran into Goodman Rigdale. "O father," Miles broke out before he thought, "may I not go with you when we begin our farm? I'll conduct me well and be obedient."

He stopped, surprised at his own forwardness, and he was more surprised when his father, looking down at him gravely, said without chiding: "Our farm? Ay, Miles, so soon as there is work to do on shore you shall come with me and bear a hand."

CHAPTER IV
HEWERS OF WOOD AND DRAWERS OF WATER

"TO-MORROW I am going ashore." Thus Miles Rigdale proclaimed, from his perch on the bunk in his father's cabin, to all who might choose to hear.

"'Tis the forty and third time you've said that in the last sennight," Ned Lister answered dryly. He was lounging in the cabin door, shirt-sleeved and shivering, while Goodwife Rigdale repaired his doublet; Mistress Hopkins, to whom the task ordinarily fell, lay ill, and her stepdaughter, Constance, was so busied that, to relieve her, Alice Rigdale had taken the young man and his mending off her hands.

"Why do you not put on your cloak, if you be cold, Ned Lister?" Dolly spoke up.

"Because 'tis too much labor to fetch it, Puss," Ned answered, whereat Miles laughed, and the Goodwife's brows puckered; another might have said it was because the sewing gave her trouble, but Miles, who felt uncomfortably that his mother disapproved of Ned as a scatter-brained, reckless fellow, guessed that she had not liked that last speech.

He was sure of his guess when she hastened to change the subject: "Does it still rain upon deck, Edward?"

"Rain and naught else; the third day of it now, yet by the look it might pour on for a week."

"And my daddy's yonder in the wet on shore," murmured Dolly, pressing close against her mother's knee, and the Goodwife sewed more slowly, with her eyes downcast.

But Miles burst into lamentation: "I think they might 'a' taken me ashore. Since we came into Plymouth Harbor they've explored and explored, and never suffered me to come, but they took Giles Hopkins with them. And now the randevous is built on shore, and some of the men are staying there, it has rained and rained so I cannot go to them. But I'm going to-morrow, the very next time the shallop sails."

"To be sure you shall," Lister answered, as he scrambled into his mended doublet. "I'll take you along with me."

Then he swaggered away jauntily, as if he had promised ample service in return for his mending, and Goodwife Rigdale, with a bit of a sigh, said softly to Miles: "'Tis well meant of Edward Lister to see you safe ashore, but when you are there, remember, you are to stay with your father, not go roving with him."

Miles's satisfaction at Ned's offer was a bit tempered by her words, but he lost the remembrance of them next morning, when he saw the sun was rising clear and the shallop would go shoreward. At once he clattered down to the cabin to get his cap and mittens, and Trug, who must go with him; then ran up on deck again, where, in the chill sunlight, the men were laboring briskly to load the shallop. Miles watched them while they put in the felling-axes and handsaws and hammers, all the tools that were to build the new town of Plymouth, and the biscuit and salt beef and pease that were to form the workers' rations.

About the time the labor was ended, Ned sauntered up to the gangway, and, seeing Miles, very speedily helped him clamber down the ladder, and made Trug leap after him. Master Isaac Allerton, who was settled comfortably in the stern, grumbled at burdening the shallop with children and curs, so Miles put his arms about Trug, and, cuddling down in the bottom of the boat, made himself as still and small as possible lest, after all, the company, thinking better of it, bid him scramble up the gangway ladder again.

But the time for that was past, for the shallop, with her sail hanging sluggish, had crept surely out from the lee of the Mayflower, and now, catching the light breeze, actually stood in to the shore. Miles forgot the discomfort of his seat among the tools while he gazed toward the approaching coast line, where was to be his home. Behind him the sun was up, and the hills that rose away inland from the harbor were bright in the cold, yellow radiance, and the water and the sky that spread about him were both very blue. He glanced back over his shoulder at the dreary old Mayflower, and was surprised to find that, as the sun struck athwart her patched sails, even she was beautiful.

Then the movement of those about him, and the sound of waves crunching on the shingle, made him look forward again. Under the shelter of a high bluff, where a great boulder ran out into the water, he saw those standing who had kept the randevous, and the randevous itself, a rude hut of boughs. In his eagerness Miles jumped up, and Trug, springing up too, began to bark, but no one took note or scolded, for the men were busied in running the shallop in alongside the rock, and some, leaping over the gunwale, were already splashing through the shallow water to the beach.

Ned and Giles Hopkins made the shore thus, so Miles must do the like, and came to land all drenched and dripping. But it was land,—good, stable, brown earth, not the hateful, rolling ship,—he had beneath his feet, and, in the delight of the long unused sensation, he forgot he was wet and chilled, forgot his father awaited him, and there was work to do. He knew only that far and near the shore stretched widely, where a boy could run, so, for choice, he set his face to the bluff that towered above the landing.

Up and up, through the keen, dry bushes, that whipped his hands and face so he laughed in the mere delight of struggling with them, he fought his way till he came breathless to the bare summit. All about him dazzled the blue of the harbor and of the unclouded sky, and yonder on his right, through its fringe of bushes, shone the blue of what seemed a cove. Down the hill rushed Miles, with Trug leaping and barking at his heels, and paused only on the shore of a great brook, that, flowing out between steep bluffs, widened into the sea.

Another was before him there, his distant kinsman, Giles Hopkins, who, for all he was a sober lad of sixteen, was a good comrade to the younger boy. He now bade Miles come upstream to the spring the men had found on their last exploration, and Miles very readily followed him through the scrubby undergrowth, where the cove narrowed on the left hand, and on the right a high bluff kept pace with the boys. "It's on that bluff they mean to set the houses," Giles explained, over his shoulder.

"Then we'll have this big stream in our dooryards," cried Miles. "Won't that be brave? I shall build me a raft, and sail to those wooded hills on the other side whenever I choose. Though, maybe, Indians dwell there," he added, with a dubious glance at Giles; he did not wish to seem afraid, but, though he intended to be a soldier, he did not purpose to fight without a musket and a long sword, and he wondered how much farther from the shore his leader would venture.

But speedily his wonder had an end, for, breaking through a thicket of leafless alders, Giles halted at a little cavity within the sand of the riverbank, where the spring of sweet water bubbled up. Down lay Miles on the turf, and, using his hand for a cup, swallowed his first draught of New England water. "'Tis better than the brackish stuff we have on shipboard," he said, as he wiped his wet hands on his wet doublet.

"The savages must have known the spot," answered the experienced Giles. "We found this path worn down hither from the bluff, and see, here is a line of stepping-stones across the brook."

Miles glanced about him, half nervously, lest along the path or across the stones he see one of their former savage passengers approaching. He was at heart relieved when, as Giles led the way up the bluff, he heard in the distance the sound of an axe crashing on a tree trunk. Giles did not turn toward the sound, however, but went plodding on uphill, for above the bluff a second summit reared itself steeply. Miles panted in his trail, endlessly upward, it seemed, till at last he stood exhausted on a lofty hilltop, whence, far as the sea spread out before him, he beheld the wooded uplands roll away to westward.

Giles was explaining wisely what a proper place this hill was for a fort, and how Captain Standish had advised the company mount upon it guns, which should command to southward the spring, and toward the harbor the landing place and the houses, which were to be built along the river bluff, when Master Hopkins and John Rigdale, tramping thither, ended their sons' holiday.

"Is this the way you would work, Miles?" Goodman Rigdale asked sternly, and, fearing lest the next word sentence him to return at once to the Mayflower, Miles ran eagerly about the task they set him.

All day he tugged chips and branches for the fire at the randevous, but it was work on land, in the free air, where a boy could shout as much as he wished, so he never realized he was weary till night came. He had to pack off to the ship with the other boys and near half the men, but he had no chance to grumble at this, as did some of his mates, for, once aboard the shallop, he leaned against Ned Lister and fell half asleep. Only when the shallop scraped the ship's side did he awake to stagger up the gangway ladder and stumble away to tell Dolly and his mother of the wonders he had seen ashore.

Next day, being Sunday, no work was done, and the next day, being Christmas, Miles, who remembered what a time of merrymaking that was at home, thought he must idle again. But here on Christmas, from sunrise to sunset, it was all stern work. "We stain this virgin soil with no Popish holydays," Master Hopkins said grimly, and, though the rest did not exult in words, they labored with double fervor to show they did no honor to the day.

Miles had his part to do on shore that Christmas and in the days that followed, though it was a different part from that he had hoped to have. When he talked to his mother and Dolly of building cottages, he had fancied that perhaps he would be allowed to sit high up on a ridgepole and drive nails. He knew he would enjoy doing that, but in practice he was set less pleasant tasks: he ran errands, not only for his father, but for every man who chose to send him; he fetched water up the steep bluff from the spring to the workers; and he carried firewood from where the choppers labored upon the bluff to where the first house was building.

On occasion he even tended the fire and saw that the porridge did not burn, and more than once was sent to carry a portion of the food to the men who, unable to rise and get their rations, lay ill in the half-built log cabins. The numbers of these sick ever multiplied, for the close quarters and bad food aboard the Mayflower had caused a fever to break out among her passengers, and the exposure to which the men and boys often recklessly subjected themselves increased the roll of the ailing, and, at last, of the dying.

Miles was sorry, of course, for the men and women who sickened and died, but it was a sorrow that did not go deep enough to prevent his enjoying the open-air life, and the moments of play that he snatched from his work. For death had not come near any that he loved; Dolly and Jack Cooke had been ill, but they were getting better, and none of his other near acquaintances had been touched. To be sure, he himself went sneezing with a great cold, but it meant nothing, any more than did his father's cough; he did not worry for it the half as much as he fretted at the dull routine labors to which he was set.

One day in January he had a hand in more exciting work, for Ned Lister and Giles Hopkins, who were going to cut swamp grass for thatch, invited him to come with them, and Ned even let him carry his sharp sickle. Ned himself turned all his effort to bearing a fowling piece, with the use of which, after the grass was cut, he had been bribed to the afternoon's labor, for he was afflicted with a hard cough that racked him most piteously when he was set to any work but hunting.

So soon as they reached the piece of marshy ground in the deep hollow behind the first range of hills, where grew the grass they sought, one of those coughing fits laid hold on Ned. He really wasn't fit to work, he said, but, when Miles volunteered to do the task for him, he found energy to direct the boy's clumsy attempts with the sickle.

Two bundles of grass the workers were expected to bring home, and Giles cut his, slowly and soberly, while Ned dallied with Miles, till he saw his companion had nearly gathered his share. Then Lister snatched the sickle from Miles, and, finishing the work in a surprisingly short time for a sick man, caught up his piece with the exclamation, "Now we'll go fowling."

Leaving the sickles and the bundles of grass where they lay, the three picked a path round the verge of the marsh and climbed westward over the hills. Last of all Miles trotted along bravely, very proud that he was one of the company, and full of interest at passing so far inland. But on the top of the second long hill, Giles suddenly cried out: "Look yonder. Is not that smoke?"

Against the dull sky to the west Miles saw a little fine curl of gray, and the question was on his tongue's end, when Ned Lister anticipated it: "No, it can be none of our people so far from the shore. Savages, maybe. Say we go down and see."

Shouldering his fowling piece, he set out jauntily, and the two boys came stoutly after. They scrambled down a rough hillslope and through another level piece, all open and stubbly, westward still, where the smoke rose. "This land has been cleared; 'tis true Indian ground here," Ned spoke suddenly, and halted.

Miles stopped short five paces behind his comrades. He looked to the hills ahead, where the bare branches of oak trees stood out clearly against the afternoon sky. It was a lowering sky, and night was coming. He glanced behind him, and saw only the barren wall of hills, no sign of the harbor or of the Mayflower. Ned and Giles were looking at each other with a something so dubious in their faces that Miles felt a griping sensation in his throat. He wondered if he could find his way back as he had come, and, doubting it, drew close to Ned, who had the fowling piece.

Ned was fiddling with the lock of the piece and he spoke rather sheepishly: "I'm not afraid. But I'm not going to run into Heaven knows what with two younkers like you on my shoulders."

"Say we march home, then?" Giles suggested, and straightway, facing round, they retraced their steps pretty smartly.

Miles was still in the rear, and, as he went, he studied the long legs of his companions and thought how much more swiftly they could run for it, if anything came up behind them. Thinking so, he forgot to look to his feet, and, as they descended a gully, fell headlong with a great clattering of stones. "Wait for me!" he cried, in a sharp, high voice that did not sound natural.

Ned glanced back, with his face tenser than its wont. "Here, take the fowling piece, Giles," he said curtly; then, returning to Miles, he lifted him to his feet, and, keeping one hand beneath his arm, helped him to hurry along.

Thus they scurried down the hillside to the swamp, and, catching up their sickles and the thatch, pressed on toward the settlement. Not till they were panting up the landward side of the great hill and caught the faint sound of hammers in the street of the half-built town, did Ned suffer the speed to slacken. "You'll make a gallant soldier one day, Miley," he said then, and began laughing. "Though I take it no one of us was afraid; eh, boys?"

They all agreed they were not in the least frightened, and some such version Ned must have reported to Captain Standish, when he told how they had seen Indian fires. For next day Miles found himself quite a hero in the sight of the other lads, because he had gone far into the woods and walked boldly right into an encampment of the savages. But Goodman Rigdale chided his son sternly for such a harebrained prank, and after that made the boy stay within his sight while he was on shore.

Miles did not greatly mind, for his father and Francis Cooke, the father of his playmate Jack, were now engaged in a delightful work in which he liked to help. Lately the whole company of the Mayflower had been divided into nineteen families, and these two men, who had been placed in one household, were building together a cottage, high up on the hillside. His father's house, Miles insisted upon calling it, though Goodman Rigdale was at pains to explain to him that the cottage belonged not to any one man, but to the whole company; the Pilgrims at Plymouth and the merchants at London, who had advanced the money for the voyage, were to hold everything in common till seven years were up and then divide all equally, and till then no man could call a house his own.

Still, Miles knew that by and by his mother and Dolly and Jack Cooke would come ashore, as other families were coming, and they would live together in that house, so it seemed the same as if it belonged to his father. He looked forward to the time when they would all be under one roof, and he would be suffered to sleep ashore, for, though his father passed his nights at the Common House, there was no room for Miles, who at twilight had to journey off to the ship. But that arrangement drew speedily to an end, for the walls of the house, built of squared logs, soon rose to a good height; the chimney of sticks and clay was finished; and at last it was but a question of thatching the roof.

Of a dull afternoon in mid-January Goodman Rigdale set out to cut swamp grass for the thatch, and took with him Miles, who had not been so far afield since his exploit with Ned Lister. They went steadily up the slope on the shoulder of the great hill, and there Miles, who had run a little ahead with Trug, paused to look back proudly at the stanch, new cottage below. "Those are brave big logs in our house, are they not, sir?" he broke out. "'Twill last us a many years."

"That, or whatever house shall fall to us at the division, will last you all your lifetime," Goodman Rigdale answered shortly. "And you will lease it of no man. You'll hold a house and a farm of your own here one day, Miles."

They tramped on a time in silence, and Miles was making himself sport by crushing in the scum of ice on the pools along their path, when his father spoke suddenly: "You're in a fair way to lead an easier life than your father or your grandfather before you, Miles. And if you be the happier, you should be so much the better man."

"Ay, sir," Miles answered vaguely, and tipped back his head to watch a great bird that went flapping across the sky; he wished his father had brought along a fowling piece.

When they came to the swamp, Goodman Rigdale cut down the grass swiftly, and Miles bundled it, though he found it hard to keep pace with his father. Goodman Rigdale, being in haste, must at the last do the work himself, and, while he bundled the grass, Miles, remembering the stolen pleasures of his last thatching trip, picked up the sickle and tried a slash or two on his own account. He managed to cut his hand, and, though he scarcely felt the pain, because the hand was cold, he stared in some fright when he saw the blood come streaking out.

Goodman Rigdale gave him a rag to tie up the hurt hand, and also gave him some good advice on the need of care with edged tools, which Miles did not think quite called for just then. He tried, however, not to show any sign of pain, because that always displeased his father; and, as he thought he had borne himself quite bravely, he was much hurt, when Goodman Rigdale, on coming down into the settlement, said: "Get you to the shallop now, Miles, and bide on board the Mayflower till I send for you. You'll be of no service with your hand cut. Mayhap you'll be better off with your mother, too. After all, you are but a young lad."

"As you bid, sir," Miles said, respectfully, but very stiffly, and walked away down the path to the landing.

Once he stopped to kick a stone out of his way, and once, before he rounded the base of the bluff, something made him face about and look back to the Common House. His father was standing by the door, watching him, and Miles, feeling much rebuked, walked on rapidly. But the image of his father remained in his mind very clear.

CHAPTER V
NEWS FROM THE SHORE

BECAUSE Miles's hand was hurt, Goodwife Rigdale made much of him, till he fairly resented it, for he had grown into the age where he was sheepish and awkward under open petting. He soon slipped away from his mother and the sympathetic Dolly, and went to spend his time with Jack Cooke, who, during the day, while his father worked on shore, was glad of company. The boys had now almost room enough on shipboard to play satisfactorily, for many of the passengers had gone ashore; but it must be quiet playing, for, of those who still remained in their cabins not a few were ill.

Goodwife Rigdale was busied to and fro in caring for the sick ones, and, at her bidding, Miles ran many an errand, to fetch water from the casks on deck or heat a pot of broth in the ship's galley. But their joint labor soon ended, for, a few days after the boy's return to the ship, came a message from Goodman Rigdale: he was just touched with the fever, he said, though nothing serious, but a many lay sick ashore, and the Goodwife could aid them as well as himself; Mistress Brewster, who, with her family, had gone to the settlement, had offered to shelter her, and he prayed her come.

Next morning Goodwife Rigdale bundled her cloak about her, and set out in the shallop. Miles, standing by the bulwark, watched her go, but only for a time; it had snowed the night before, so the railings were white and smooth to the touch, and he found it of more absorbing interest to poke off strips of the frozen snow, and send them splashing into the cold-looking water beneath the ship's side. By the time he looked again to the shallop, it was so near shore he could no longer make out his mother's figure, and his feet were chilled too, so he went back to Dolly in the cabin.

At first he found it manly and grown up to be left in charge, for so he esteemed his position. The cut in his hand was healing well, and he felt he would have been working ashore, if it were not that some one must mind his father's quarters on shipboard and care for Dolly and Solomon. He ordered his sister about in a paternal manner; he rebuked her severely if she so much as showed her small, snub nose on the frosty deck without wrapping herself up well; and he even insisted on her going to bed punctually at sundown, while he, in the glory of manhood, waited in the great cabin to hear what news those who came from the shore would bring.

But Dolly took her turn when it came to their daily meals, for she had certain deft, housewifely ways, which Miles could not hope to imitate, and he was ashamed even of trying to better himself, after he heard the little woman speak like her mother of "men and boys that set a body's kitchen in a mash." Miles might tug out the pot of broth,—'twas all he was fit for; Goodwife Dolly would herself do the stirring and tasting; and though, among so many cooks, the broth sometimes burned, yet they always contrived to eat it.

The four of them—Miles, Dolly, Jack, and Solomon—ate their food together in the Rigdales' cabin: most times it was only broth, or perhaps salted meat and biscuit, which Goodwife Rigdale, before she went away, had laid out for them; but once Goodman Cooke brought them from the shore a large piece of a cold roast goose. There was but one drumstick, and each felt he should have it,—Jack because he had been ill, and Dolly because she was a girl, and Miles because he was the eldest. Solomon said nothing, but he purred his loudest and rubbed his head against Dolly's knee. They ended by eating the drumstick together, each a bite, turn and turn about, and what they could not get from the bone was left to Solomon, who dragged his ration beneath the bunk, and, with eyes big and fiery, growled at them.

The children remembered that supper, not only because of the cold goose, but because it was the last they ate together, for next morning Goodman Cooke took Jack to the shore. Miles watched his friend's small preparations enviously, and Dolly, who had come also to stand in the doorway of the Cookes' cabin, voiced a sorrowful wish: "I think I'd best go too, and see father and mother."

"They've no place to put you, lass," Goodman Cooke explained. "So soon as there is place, they'll send for you both, be sure. For Doctor Fuller says your father grows heartier, Miles," he went on; "you've no need to worry yourself."

"Indeed, I have not worried," Miles answered, in some surprise.

After Jack went, life on shipboard was not so pleasant. Dolly began to fret for her mother and scoff at Miles's authority; Miles grew cross; and the broth burned oftener than ever, and finally, giving out altogether, left them with nothing to eat but dry biscuit. With this woful tale of starvation, Dolly betook herself at last to Constance Hopkins in the great cabin, and Miles, glad that some one should make known their unhappy state, yet ashamed to do so himself, lagged on behind.