A PILGRIM MAID

A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620

"Constance opened the door, stepping back to let the bride precede her"

A PILGRIM MAID

A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620

BY
MARION AMES TAGGART

AUTHOR OF
"CAPTAIN SYLVIA," "THE DAUGHTERS OF THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE," "THE LITTLE GREY HOUSE," "HOLLYHOCK HOUSE," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY THE DONALDSONS

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK LONDON
1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

DEDICATED
TO
YOU, MY DEAR
WHO SO WELL KNOW WHY

PREFACE

This story is like those we hear of our neighbours to-day: it is a mixture of fact and fancy.

The aim in telling it has been to present Plymouth Colony as it was in its first three years of existence; to keep to possibilities, even while inventing incidents.

Actual events have been transferred from a later to an earlier year when they could be made useful, to bring them within the story's compass, and to develop it.

For instance, John Billington was lost for five days and died early, but not as early as in the story. Stephen Hopkins was fined for allowing his servants to play shovelboard, but this did not happen till some time later than 1622. Stephen Hopkins was twice married; records show that there was dissension; that the second wife tried to get an inheritance for her own children, to the injury of the son and daughter of the first wife. Facts of this sort are used, enlarged upon, construed to cause, or altered to suit, certain results.

But there is fidelity to the general trend of events, above all to the spirit of Plymouth in its beginnings. As far as may be, the people who have been transferred into the story act in accordance with what is known of the actual bearers of these names.

There was a Maid of Plymouth, Constance Hopkins, who came in the Mayflower, with her father Stephen; her stepmother, Eliza; her brother, Giles, and her little half-sister and brother, Damaris and Oceanus, and to whom the Anne, in 1623, brought her husband, Honourable Nicholas Snowe, afterward one of the founders of Eastham, Massachusetts.

Undoubtedly the real Constance Hopkins was sweeter than the story can make her, as a living girl must be sweeter than one created of paper and ink. Yet it is hoped that this Plymouth Maid, Constance, of the story, may also find friends.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A PILGRIM MAID

A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620

A PILGRIM MAID

[CHAPTER I]

With England's Shores Left Far Astern

A young girl, brown-haired, blue-eyed, with a sweet seriousness that was neither joy nor sorrow upon her fair pale face, leaned against the mast on the Mayflower's deck watching the bustle of the final preparations for setting sail westward.

A boy somewhat older than she stood beside her whittling an arrow from a bit of beechwood, whistling through his teeth, his tongue pressed against them, a livelier air than a pilgrim boy from Leyden was supposed to know, and sullenly scorning to betray interest in the excitement ashore and aboard.

A little girl clung to the pretty young girl's skirt; the unlikeness between them, though they were sisters, was explained by their being but half sisters. Little Damaris was like her mother, Constance's stepmother, while Constance herself reflected the delicate loveliness of her own and her brother Giles's mother, dead in early youth and lying now at rest in a green English churchyard while her children were setting forth into the unknown.

Two boys—one older than Constance, Giles's age, the other younger than the girl—came rushing down the deck with such impetuosity, plus the younger lad's head used as a battering ram, that the men at work stowing away hampers and barrels, trying to clear a way for the start, gave place to the rough onslaught.

Several looked after the pair in a way that suggested something more vigorous than a look had it not been that fear of the pilgrim leaders restrained swearing. Not a whit did the charging lads care for the wrath they aroused. The elder stopped himself by clutching the rope which Constance Hopkins idly swung, while the younger caught Giles around the waist and nearly pulled him over.

"I'll teach you manners, you young savage, Francis Billington!" growled Giles, but he did not mean it, as Francis well knew.

"If I'm a savage I'll be the only one of us at home in America," chuckled the boy.

"Getting ready an arrow for the savage?" he added.

"It's all decided. There's been the greatest to-do ashore. Why didn't you come off the ship to see the last of 'em, Constance?" interrupted the older boy. Constance Hopkins shook her head, sadly.

"Nay, then, John, I've had my fill of partings," she said. "Are they gone back, those we had to leave behind?"

"That have they!" cried John Billington. "Some of them were sorry to miss the adventure, but if truth were told some were glad to be well out of it, and with no more disgrace in setting back than that the Mayflower could not hold us all. Well, they've missed danger and maybe death, but I'd not be out of it for a king's ransom. Giles, what do you think is whispered? That the Speedwell could make the voyage as well as the Mayflower, though she be smaller, if only she carried less sail, and that her leaking is—a greater leak in her master Reynolds's truth, and that she'd be seaworthy if he'd let her!"

"Cur!" growled Giles Hopkins. "He knows he'd have to stay with his ship in the wilderness a year it might be and there's better comfort in England and Holland! We're well rid of him if he's that kind of a coward. I wondered myself if he was up to a trick when we put in the first time, at Dartmouth. This time when we made Plymouth I smelled a rat certain. Are we almost loaded?"

"Yes. They've packed all the provisions from the Speedwell into the Mayflower that she will hold. We'll be off soon. Not too soon! The sixth day of September, and we a month dallying along the shore because of the Speedwell's leaking! Constantia, you'll be cold before we make a fire in the New World I'm thinking!"

John Billington chuckled as if the cold of winter in the wilderness were a merry jest.

"Cold, and maybe hungry, and maybe ill of body and sick of heart, but never quite losing courage, I hope, John, comrade!" Constance said, looking up with a smile and a flush that warmed her white cheeks from which heavy thoughts had driven their usual soft colour.

"No fear! You're the kind that says little and does much," said John Billington with surprising sharpness in a lad that never seemed to have a thought to spare for anything but madcap pranks.

"Here come Father, and the captain, and dear John," said little Damaris.

Stephen Hopkins was a strong-built man, with a fire in his eye, and an air of the world about him, in spite of his severe Puritan garb, that declared him different from most of his comrades of the Leyden community of English exiles.

With all her likeness to her dead English girl-mother, who was gentle born and well bred, there was something in Constance as she stood now, head up and eyes bright, that was also like her father.

Beside Mr. Hopkins walked a thick-set man, a soldier in every motion and look, with little of the Puritan in his air, and just behind them came a young man, far younger than either of the others, with an open, pleasant English face, and an expression at once shy and friendly.

"Oh, dear John Alden!" cried little Damaris, and forsook Constance's skirt for John Alden's ready arms which raised her to his shoulder.

Giles Hopkins's gloom lifted as he returned Captain Myles Standish's salute.

"Yes, Captain; I'm ready enough to sail," he said, answering the captain's question.

"Mistress Constantia?" suggested Myles Standish.

"Is there doubt of it when we've twice put in from sea, and were ready to sail when we left Southampton a month ago?" asked Constance. "Sure we are ready, Captain Standish, as you well know. Where is Mistress Rose?"

"In the women's cabin with Mistress Hopkins putting to rights their belongings as fast as they can before we weigh anchor, and get perhaps stood on our heads by winds and waves," Captain Standish smiled. "Though the wind is fine for us now." His face clouded. "Mistress Rose is a frail rose, Con! They will be coming on deck to see the start."

"The voyage may give sweet Rose new strength, Captain Standish," murmured Constance coming close to the captain and slipping her hand into his, for she was his prime favourite and his lovely, frail young wife's chosen friend, in spite of the ten years difference in their ages.

"Ah, Con, my lass, God grant it, but I'm sore afraid for her! How can she buffet the exposure of a wilderness winter, and—hush! Here they are!" whispered Myles Standish.

Mistress Eliza Hopkins was tall, bony, sinewy of build, with a dark, strong face, determination and temper in her eye. Rose Standish was her opposite—a slight, pale, drooping creature not more than five years above twenty; patience, suffering in her every motion, and clinging affection in every line of her gentle face.

Constance ran to wind her arm around her as Rose came up and slipped one little hand into her husband's arm.

Mrs. Hopkins frowned.

"It likes me not to see you so forward with caresses, Constantia," she said, and her voice rasped like the ship's tackles as the sailors got up the canvas.

"It is not becoming in the elect whose hearts are set upon heavenly things to fawn upon creatures, nor make unmaidenly displays."

Giles kicked viciously at the rope which Constance had held. It was not hard to guess that the unnatural gloom, the sullenness that marked a boy meant by Nature to be pleasant, was due to bad blood between him and this aggressive stepmother, who plainly did not like him.

"Oh, Mistress Hopkins," cried Constance, flushing, "why do you think it is wrong to be loving? Never can I believe God who made us with warm hearts, and gave us such darlings as Rose Standish, didn't want us to love and show our love."

"You are much too free with your irreverence, Mistress Constantia; it becomes you not to proclaim your Maker's opinions and desires for his saints," said Mrs. Hopkins, frowning heavily.

"'Sdeath, Eliza, will you never let the girl alone?" cried Stephen Hopkins, angrily.

"As though we had nothing to think of in weighing anchor and leaving England for ever—and for what else besides, who knows—without carping at a little girl's loving natural ways to an older girl whom she loves? I agree with Connie; it's good to sweeten life with affection."

"Connie, forsooth!" echoed Mrs. Hopkins, bitterly. "Are we to use meaningless titles for young women setting forth to found a kingdom? And do you still use the oaths of worldlings, as you did just now? Oh, Stephen Hopkins, may you not be found unworthy of your high calling and invoke the wrath of Heaven upon your family!"

Stephen Hopkins looked ready to burst out into hot wrath, but Myles Standish gave him a humorous glance, and shrugged his shoulders.

"What would you?" he seemed to say. "Old friend, bad temper seizes every opportunity to wreak itself, and we who have seen the world can afford to let the women fume. Jealousy is a worse vice than an oath of the Stuart reign."

Stephen Hopkins harkened to this unspoken philosophy; Myles Standish had great influence over him. This, with the rapid gathering on deck of the rest of the pilgrims, served to avert what threatened to be an explosion of pardonable wrath. They came crowding up from the cabins, this courageous band of determined men and women, and gathered silently to look their last on home, and not merely on home, but on the comforts of the established life which to many among them were necessary to their existence.

There were many children, sober little men and women, in unchildlike caricatures of their elders' garb and with solemn round faces looking scared by the gravity around them.

Priscilla Mullins gathered the children together and led them over to join Constance Hopkins. She and Constance divided the love of the child pilgrims between them. Priscilla, round of face, smooth and rosy of cheek, wholesome and sensible, was good to look upon. It often happened that her duty brought her near to wherever John Alden might chance to be, but no one had ever suspected that John objected.

John Alden had been taken on as cooper from Southampton when the Mayflower first sailed. It was not certain that the pilgrims could keep him with them. Already they had learned to value him, and many a glance was now exchanged that told the hope that sunny little Priscilla might help to hold the young man on this hard expedition.

The crew of the Mayflower pulled up her sails, but without the usual sailor songs. Silently they pulled, working in unison to the sharp words of command uttered by their officers, till every shred of canvas, under which they were to set forth under a favouring wind, was strained into place and set.

On the shore was gathered a crowd gazing, wondering, at this departure. Some there were who were to have been of the company in the lesser ship, the Speedwell, which had been remanded from the voyage as unfit for it. These lingered to see the setting forth for the New World which was not to be their world, after all.

There were many who gazed, pityingly, awe-struck, but bewildered by the spirit that led these severe-looking people away from England first, and then from Holland, to try their fortunes where no fortune promised.

Others there were who laughed merrily over the absurdity of the quest, and these called all sorts of jests and quips to the pilgrims on the ship, inviting to a contest of wit which the pilgrims utterly disdained.

And then the by-standers on wharf and sands of old Plymouth became silent, for, as the Mayflower began to move out from her dock, there arose the solemn chant of a psalm.

The air was wailing, lugubrious, unmusical, but the words were awesome.

"When Israel went out from Egypt, from the land of a strange people," they were singing.

"A strange people!" And these pilgrims were of English blood, and this was England which they were thus renouncing!

What curious folk these were!

But this psalm was followed by another: "The Lord is my shepherd."

Ah, that was another matter! No one who heard them, however slight the sympathy felt for this unsympathetic band, but hoped that the Lord would shepherd them, "lead them beside still waters," for the sea might well be unquiet.

"Oh, poor creatures, poor creatures," said a buxom woman, snuggling her baby's head into her deep shoulder, and wiping her own eyes with her apron. "I fain must pity 'em, that I must, though I'm none too lovin' myself toward their queer dourness. But I hope the Lord will shepherd 'em; sore will they need it, I'm thinkin', yonder where there's no shepherds nor flocks, but only wild men to cut them down like we do haw for the church, as they all thinks is wicked!" she mourned, motherly yearning toward the people going out the harbour like babes in the wood, into no one would dare say what awful fate.

The pilgrims stood with their faces set toward England, with England tugging at their heart strings, as the strong southeasterly wind filled the Mayflower's canvas and pulled at her shrouds.

And as they sailed away the monotonous chant of the psalms went on, floating back to England, a farewell and a prophecy.

Rose Standish's tears were softly falling and her voice was silent, but Constance Hopkins chanted bravely, and the children joined her with Priscilla Mullins's strong contralto upholding them.

Even Giles sang, and the two scamps of Billington boys looked serious for once, and helped the chant.

Myles Standish raised his soldier's hat and turned to Stephen Hopkins, holding out his right hand.

"We're fairly off this time, friend Stephen," he said. "God speed us."

"Amen, Captain Myles, for else we'll speed not, returned Stephen Hopkins.

"Oh, Daddy, we're together anyway!" cried Constance, with one of her sudden bursts of emotion which her stepmother so severely condemned, and she threw herself on her father's breast.

Mr. Hopkins did not share his wife's view of his beloved little girl's demonstrativeness. He patted her head gently, tucking a stray wisp of hair under her Puritan cap.

"There, there, my child, there, there, Connie! Surely we're together and shall be. So it can't be a wilderness for us, can it?" he said.

An hour later, the wind still favouring, the Mayflower dropped sunsetward, out of old Plymouth Harbour.

[CHAPTER II]

To Buffet Waves and Ride on Storms

The wind held fair, the golden September weather waited on each new day at its rising and sent it at its close, radiantly splendid, into the sea ahead of the Mayflower as she swept westward.

Full canvas hoisted she was able to sail at her best speed under the favouring conditions so that the hopeful young people whom she carried talked confidently of the houses they would build, the village they would found before heavy frosts. Captain Myles Standish, always impetuous as any of the boys, was one of those who let themselves forget there were such things as storms.

"We'll be New Englishmen at this rate before we fully realize we've left home; what do you say, my lassies three?" he demanded, pausing in a rapid stride of the deck before Constance Hopkins and two young girls who were her own age, but seemed much younger, Humility Cooper and her cousin, Elizabeth Tilley.

"What do you three mermaidens in this forward nook each morning?" Captain Standish went on without waiting for a reply to his first question, which indeed, he had not asked to have it answered.

"Elizabeth's mother, Mistress John Tilley, is sick and declares that she shall die," said Constance, Humility and Elizabeth being shyly silent before the captain.

"No one ever thought to live through sea-sickness, nor wanted to," declared Captain Myles with his hearty laugh. "Yet no one dies of it, that is certain. And is Mistress Ann Tilley also lain down and left Humility to the mercy of the dolphins? And is your stepmother, too, Con, a victim? It's a calm sea we've been having by comparison. I've sailed from England into France when there was a sea running, certes! But this—pooh!"

"Humility's cousin, Mistress Ann Tilley, is not ill, nor my stepmother, Captain Standish, but they are attending to those who are, and to the children. Father says that when he sailed for Virginia, before my mother died, meaning to settle there, that the storm that wrecked them on Bermuda Island and kept us from being already these eleven years colonists in the New World, was a wind and sea that make this seem no more than the lake at the king's palace, where the swans float."

Constance looked up smiling at the captain as she answered, but he noted that her eyes were swollen from tears.

"Take a turn with me along the deck, child," Captain Myles said, gruffly, and held out a hand to steady Constance on her feet.

"Now, what was it?" he asked, lightly touching the young girl's cheek when they had passed beyond the hearing of Constance's two demure little companions. "Homesick, my lass?"

"Heartsick, rather, Captain Myles," said Constance, with a sob. "Mistress Hopkins hates me!"

"Oh, fie, Connie, how could she?" asked the captain, lightly, but he scowled angrily. There was much sympathy between him and Stephen Hopkins, neither of whom agreed with the extreme severity of most of the pilgrims; they both had seen the world and looked at life from their wider experience.

Captain Standish knew that Giles's and Constance's mother had been the daughter of an old and honourable family, with all the fine qualities of mind and soul that should be the inheritance of gentle breeding. He knew how it had come about that Stephen Hopkins had married a second time a woman greatly her inferior, whose jealousy of the first wife's children saddened their young lives and made his own course hard and unpleasant. Prone to speak his mind and fond of Giles and Constance, the impetuous captain often found it hard to keep his tongue between his teeth when Dame Eliza indulged in her favourite game of badgering, persecuting her stepchildren. Now, when he said: "Fie, how could she?" Constance looked up at him with a forlorn smile. She knew the captain was quite aware that her stepmother could, and did dislike her, and she caught the anger in his voice.

"How could she not, dear Captain Myles?" she asked. Then, with her pent-up feeling overmastering her, she burst out sobbing.

"Oh, you know she hates, she hates me, Captain!" she cried. "Nothing I can do is pleasing to her. I take care of Damaris—sure I love my little sister, and do not remember the half that is not my sister in her! And I wait on Mistress Hopkins, and sew, and do her bidding, and I do not answer her cruel taunts, nor do I go to my father complaining; but she hates me. Is it fair? Could I help it that my father loved my own mother, and married her, and that she was a lovely and accomplished lady?"

"Do you want to help it, if by helping you mean altering, Connie?" asked Captain Myles, with a twinkle. "No, child, you surely cannot help all these things which come by no will of yours, but by the will of God. And I am your witness that you are ever patient and dutiful. Bear as best you can, sweet Constantia, and by and by the wrong will become right, as right in the end is ever strongest. I cannot endure to see your young eyes wet with tears called out by unkindness. There is enough and to spare of hard matters to endure for all of us on this adventure not to add to it what is not only unnecessary, but unjust. Cheer up, Con, my lass! It's a long lane—in England!—that has no turning, and it's a long voyage on the seas that ends in no safe harbour! And do you know, Connie girl, that there's soon to be a turn in this bright weather? There's a feeling of change and threatening in this soft wind."

Constance wiped her eyes and smiled, knowing that the captain wished to lead her into other themes than her own troubles, the discussion of which was, after all, useless.

"I don't know about the weather, except the weather I'm having," she said. "Ah, I don't want it to storm, not on the mid-seas, Captain Myles."

"Aye, but it's the mid-seas of the year, Connie, when the days and nights are one in length, and at that time old wise men say a storm is usually forthcoming. We'll weather it, never fear! If we are bearing westward a great hope and mission as we all believe—not I in precisely the same fashion as these stricter saints, but in my own way no less—then we are sure to reach our goal, my dear," said the captain cheerfully.

"Sometimes I lose faith; I think I am wicked," sighed Constance.

"We are all poor miserable sinners! Even the English Church which we have cast off and consigned to perdition, puts that confession into our mouths," said Captain Myles, with another twinkle, and was gratified that Constance's laugh rang out in response to his thinly veiled mischief.

Captain Standish proved to be a true prophet. On the second day after he had announced to Constance the coming change in weather it came. The Mayflower ran into a violent storm, seas and wind were wild, the small ship tossed on the crest of billows and plunged down into the chasm between them as they reared high above her till it seemed impossible that she should hold together, far less hold her course.

In truth she did not hold to her course, but fell off it before the storm, groaning in every beam as if with fearful grief at her own danger, and at the likelihood of destroying by her destruction the hope, the tremendous mission which she bore within her.

The women and children cowered below in their crowded quarters—lacking air, space, every comfort—numb with the misery of sickness and the threat of imminent death.

Constance Hopkins, young as she was, cheered and sustained her elders. Like a mettlesome horse that throws up his head and puts forth renewed strength when there rises before him a long steep mountain, Constance laughed at fear, sang and jested, tenderly helping the sick, gathering around her the children for story-telling and such quiet play as there was room for. Little Damaris was sick and cross, but Constance comforted her with unfailing patience, proving so motherly an elder sister than even Mistress Eliza's jealous dislike for the girl melted when she saw her so loving to the child.

"You are proving yourself a good girl, Constantia," she said, with something like shame. "If I die you will look after Damaris and bring her up as I would have done? Promise me this, for I know that you will never break your word, and having it I can leave my child without anxiety for her future."

"It needs no promise, Stepmother," said Constance. "Surely I would not fail to do my best for my little sister. But if you want my word fully, it is given you. I will try to be grown up and wise, and bring up Damaris carefully if you should leave her. But isn't this silly talk! You will not die. You will tell Damaris's little girls about your voyage in the Mayflower, and laugh with them over how you talked of dying when we were so tossed and tumbled, like a tennis ball struck by a strong hand holding a big racquet, but unskilled at the game!" Constance laughed but her stepmother frowned.

"Never shall I talk of games to my daughter," she said, "nor shall you, if you take my place." Then she relented, recalling Constance's unselfish kindness all these dark hours.

"But you have been a good girl, Constantia. Though I fear you are not chastised in spirit as becomes one of our company of saints, yet have you been patient and gentle in all ways, and a mother to Damaris and the other small ones. I can do no less than say this and remember it," she added.

Constance was white from weariness and the fear that she fought down with merry chatter, but now a warm flush spread to her hair.

"Oh, Mistress Hopkins, if you would not hate me, if you would but think me just a little worthy of kindly thoughts—for indeed I am not wicked—the hardship of this voyage would be a cheap price to pay for it! I would not be so unhappy as I am if, though you did not love me, you would at least not hate me, nor mind that my father loved me—me and Giles!" Constance cried passionately, trembling on the verge of tears.

Then she dashed her hand across her eyes as Giles might have done, and laughed to choke down a sob.

"Priscilla! Priscilla Mullins, come! I need your help," she called.

"What to do, Constance?" asked Priscilla, edging her way from the other end of the crowded cabin to the younger girl.

Priscilla looked blooming still, in spite of the conditions to dim her bright colour.

Placid by nature, she did not fret over discomfort or danger. Trim and neat, she was a pleasant sight among the distressed, pallid faces about her, like a bit of English sky, a green English meadow, a warm English hearth in the waste of waters that led to the waste of wintry wilderness.

"What am I do to for thee, Constance?" Priscilla asked in her deep, alto voice.

"Help me get these children up into the air in a sheltered nook on deck," said Constance. "They are suffocating here."

"No, no!" cried two or three mothers. "They will be washed away, Constantia."

"Not where we have been taking them these three days past," said Priscilla. "Let me go first and get John Alden to prepare that nest of sails and ropes he made so cleverly for us two days ago."

"What doesn't John Alden do cleverly?" murmured Constance, with a sly glance. "Go then, Pris dear, but don't forget to hasten back to tell me it is ready."

Priscilla did not linger. John Alden had gotten two others to help him, and a safe shelter where the children could be packed to breathe the air they sorely needed was ready when Priscilla came to ask for it. So Priscilla hurried back and soon she and Constance had the little pilgrims safely stowed, made comfortable, though Damaris feared the great waves towering on every side and clung to Constance in desperate faith.

"What is to do yonder?" asked Priscilla of John Alden, who after they were settled came to see that everything was right with them.

"What are the men working upon?"

"I suppose it's no harm telling you now," said John Alden, "since they are at work as you see, but the ship has been leaking badly, and one of her main beams bowed and cracked, directly amidships. There has been the next thing to mutiny among the sailors, who have no desire to go to the bottom, and wanted to turn back. We have been in consultation and they have growled and threatened, but we are half way over to the western world so may as safely go on as to return. At last we got them to agree to that and now they are mending the ship. We have aboard a great jack; one of the passengers brought it out of Holland, luckily. What they are doing yonder is jacking up that broken beam. The carpenter is going to set a post under it in the lower deck, and calk the leaky upper parts, and so we shall go on to America. The ship is staunch enough, we all agree, if only we can hold her where she is strained. But you had no idea of how near you were to going back, had you?"

"Oh, no!" cried Priscilla. "Almost am I tempted to wish we had returned."

"No, no, no!" cried Constance. "No turning back! Storms, and savages, and wilderness ahead, but no turning back!"

Damaris fell asleep on Constance's shoulder, and slept so deeply that when Myles Standish, Stephen Hopkins, and John Alden came to help the girls to get the children safely down again into their cabin she did not waken, and Constance begged to be allowed to stay there with her, letting her sleep in the strong air, for the child had troubled her sister by her languor.

Cramped and aching Constance kept her place, Damaris's dead weight upon her arm, till, after a long time, her father returned to her with a moved face.

"Shift the child to my arm, Constance," he said, sitting beside her. "You must be weary with your long vigil over her, my patient, sweet Constance!"

"Oh, Father-daddy," cried Constance, quick tears springing to her eyes, "what does it matter if you call me that? You will always love me, my father?"

"Child, child, what aileth thee?" said Stephen Hopkins, gently. "Are you not the very core of my heart, so like your lovely young mother that you grip me at times with the pain of my joy in you and my sorrow for her. The pilgrim brethren would not approve of such expressions of love, my dear, yet I think God who gave me a father's heart and you a daughter's, and taught us our duty to Him by the figure of His own Fatherhood, cannot share that condemnation. All the world to me you shall be to the end of my life, my Constance. But I came to tell you a great piece of news. The Mayflower has shipped another passenger, mid-seas though it is."

Constance looked up questioningly.

"I have another son, Constance. The angels given charge of little children saw him safely to us through the perils of the voyage. Do you not think, as I do, that this child is like a promise to us of success in the New World?"

"Yes, Father," said Constance, softly, sweet gravity upon her face, and tears upon her lashes. "Will he be called Stephen?"

"Your stepmother wishes him named Oceanus, because of his sea-birth. Do you like the name?" asked her father.

Constance shook her head. "Not a whit," she said, "for it sounds like a heathen god, and that I do not like, though my stepmother is a stricter Puritan than are you and I. I would love another Stephen Hopkins. But if it must be Oceanus—well, I'll try to make it a smooth ocean for the little fellow, his life with us, I mean."

"Shall we go below to see him? I will carry Damaris," said Mr. Hopkins, rising, and offering Constance his hand, at the same time shifting her burden to himself.

Damaris whined and burrowed into her father's shoulder, half waking. Constance stumbled and fell laughing, to her knees, numb from long sitting with the child's weight upon them.

At the door of the cabin they met Doctor Fuller, who paused to look long and steadily at Constance.

"You have been saving me work, little mistress," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Your blithe courage has done more than my physic to hold off serious trouble in yonder cabin, and your service of hands has been as helpful. When we get to our new home will you accept the position of physician's assistant? Will you be my cheerful little partner, and let us be Samuel Fuller and Company, physicians and surgeons to the worshipful company of pilgrims in the New World?"

Constance dropped a curtsey as well as the narrow space allowed. She, as well as all the rest of the ship's company, loved and trusted this kind young doctor who had left his wife and child to follow him later, and was crossing the seas with the pilgrims as the minister to their suffering bodies.

"Indeed, Doctor Fuller, I will accept the office, though it will make me so proud that I shall be turned out of the community as unfit to be part of it," she cried.

There followed after this long days of bleak endurance, the cold increasing, the storms raging. For days at a time the Mayflower lay to, stripped of all sail, floating in currents, thrown up on high, driven nose down into an apparently bottomless pit, the least of man's work cut off from man's natural life, left to herself in the desert of waters, packed with the humanity that crowded her.

Yet through it all the men and women she bore did not lose heart, but beneath the overwhelming misery of their condition kept alive the sense of God's sustaining providence and personal direction.

Thus it was not strange that the little ship and her company proved stronger than the wintry storms, that she survived and, once more hoisting sail, kept on her westerly course.

It was November; for two months and more the Mayflower had sailed and drifted, but now there were signs that the hazardous voyage was nearly over.

"Come on deck, Con! Come on deck!" shouted Giles Hopkins. "All hands on deck for the first glimpse of land! They think 'twill soon be seen."

Pale, weak, but quivering with joy, the pilgrims gathered on the Mayflower's decks.

Rose Standish was but the shadow of her sweet self. Constance lingered to give the final touches to Rose's toilette; they were all striving to make some little festal appearance to their garments suitably to greet the New World.

"I can hardly go up, dear Connie," murmured Rose. "The Mayflower hath taken all the vigour from this poor rose."

"When the mayflower goes, the rose blooms," said Constance. "Wait till we get ashore and you are in your own warm, cozy home!"

Rose shook her head, but made an effort to greet Captain Myles brightly as he came to help her to the deck.

"What land are we to see, Myles? Where are we?" she asked.

"Gosnold's country of Cape Cod, rose of the world," said Captain Myles. "It lies just ahead. Have a care, Constance; don't trip. Here we are, then!"

They took their places in a sheltered nook and waited. The Billington boys had clambered high aloft and no one reproved them. Though their pranks were always calling forth a reprimand from some one, this time no one blamed them, but rather envied them for getting where they could see land first of all.

Sharply Francis Billington's boyish voice rang out:

"Land! Land! Land!" he shouted.

It was but an instant before the entire company of pilgrims were on their knees, sobbing, chanting, praising, each in his own way, the God who had brought their pilgrimage to this end.

That night they tacked southward, looking for Hudson's river, but the sea was so rough, the shoals around the promontories southward so dangerous, that they gave over the quest and turned back.

The next day the sun shone with the brilliant glory of winter upon the sea, and upon the low-lying coast, as the Mayflower came into her harbour.

"Father, it is the New World!" cried Constance, clasping her father's arm in spite of the tiny Mayflower baby which she held.

"The New World it is, friend Stephen. Now to conquer it!" said Myles Standish, clapping Mr. Hopkins on the shoulder and touching his sword hilt with the other hand.

[CHAPTER III]

Weary Waiting at the Gates

"Call Giles hither. I need help to strap these blankets to carry safely, Mr. Hopkins," said Dame Eliza Hopkins, bustling up to her husband two hours after the Mayflower had made anchorage.

"To carry whither, wife?" asked Mr. Hopkins, with the amused smile that always irritated his excitable wife by its detached calmness.

"Will you not need the blankets at night? Truth to tell this Cape Cod air seems to me well fit for blankets."

"And for what other use should they be carried ashore? Or would they keep us warm left on the ship?" demanded Mistress Eliza. "Truly, Stephen Hopkins, you are a test of the patience of a saint!"

"Which needs no testing, since the patience of the saints has passed into a proverb," commented Stephen Hopkins. "But with all humility I would answer 'yes' to your question, Eliza: the blankets would surely keep you warmer when on the ship than if they were ashore, since it is on the ship that you are to remain."

"Remain! On the ship? For how long, pray? And why? Do you not think that I have had enough and to spare of this ship after more than two months within her straitened cabin, and Oceanus crying, poor child, and wearing upon me as if he felt the hardship of his birthplace? Nor is Mistress White's baby, Peregrine, happier than my child in being born on this Mayflower. When one is not crying, the other is and oftener than not in concert. Why should I not go ashore with the others?" demanded Mistress Eliza, in quick anger.

"Ah, wife, wife, my poor Eliza," sighed Mr. Hopkins, raising his hand to stem the torrent. "Leave not all the patience of the saints to those in paradise! You, with all the other women, will remain on the ship while certain of the men—the rest being left to guard you—go in the shallop to explore our new country and pick the fittest place for our settlement. How long we may be gone, I do not know. Rest assured it will not be an absence wilfully prolonged. You will be more comfortable here than ashore. It is likely that when you do go ashore to begin the new home you will look back regretfully at the straitened quarters of the little ship that has served us well, in spite of sundry weaknesses which she developed. Be that as it may, this delay is necessary, as reflection will show you, so let us not weary ourselves with useless discussion of it."

Mistress Hopkins knew that when her husband spoke in this manner, discussion of his decision was indeed useless. She had an awe of his wisdom, his amused toleration of her, of his superior birth and education, and, though she ventured to goad him in small affairs, when it came to greater ones she dared not dispute him. So now she bit her lip, as angry and disappointed tears sprang to her eyes, but did not reply.

Stephen Hopkins produced from his inner pocket an oblong packet sewn in an oilskin wrapper.

"Here, Eliza," he said, "are papers of value to this expedition, together with some important only to ourselves, but to us sufficiently so to guard them carefully. The public papers were entrusted to me just before we sailed from Southampton by one interested in the welfare of this settlement. My own papers relate to the English inheritance that will be my children's should they care to claim it. These papers I must leave in your care now that I am to go on this exploring party ashore. I will not risk carrying them where savages might attack us, though I have kept them upon me throughout the voyage. Guard them well. Not for worlds would I lose the papers relating to the community, sorry as I should be to lose my own, for those were a trust, and personal loss would be nothing compared to the loss of them."

He handed the packet to his wife as he spoke and she took it, turning it curiously over and about.

"I hope the English inheritance will one day come to Damaris and Oceanus," she said, bitterly, her jealousy of the two children of her husband's first wife plain to be seen. "Here's Giles," she added, hastily thrusting the packet into her bosom with a violence that her husband noted and wondered at.

"Father," said Giles, coming up, "take me with you."

Gloom and discontent were upon his brow. Giles's face was fast growing into a settled expression of bitterness. His stepmother's dislike for him, and for his sister, Giles bore less well than Constance. The natural sweetness of the girl, her sunny hopefulness, led her ceaselessly to try to make things pleasant around her, to be always ready to forget and begin again, hoping that at last she might win her stepmother's kindness. But Giles never forgot, consequently never could hope that the bad situation would mend, and he returned Mistress Eliza's dislike with compound interest. He was a brave lad, capable of strong attachments, but the bitterness that he harboured, the unhappiness of his home life, were doing him irreparable harm. His father was keenly alive to this fact, and one of his motives in coming to the New World with the Puritans, with whose strict views he by no means fully sympathized, was to give Giles the opportunity to conquer the wilderness, and in conquering it to find a vent for his energy, happiness for himself.

Mr. Hopkins turned to the boy now and sighed, seeing that he had heard his stepmother's expression of hope that her children would receive their father's English patrimony. But he said only:

"Take you with me where, Giles?"

"Exploring the country. I am too old, too strong to stay here with the women and children. Besides, I want to go," said Giles, shortly.

"But few of the men are to go, my son; you will not be reckoned among the weaklings in staying," said Mr. Hopkins, laying his hand upon the boy's shoulder with a smile that Giles did not return. "Enough have volunteered; Captain Standish has made up his company. You are best here and will find enough to do. Have you thought that you are my eldest, and that if we met with savages, or other fatal onslaught, that you must take my place? I cannot afford to risk both of us at once. You are my reliance and successor, Giles lad."

The boy's sullen face broke into a piteous smile; he flushed and looked into his father's eyes with a glance that revealed for an instant the dominant passion of his life, his adoring love for his father.

Then he dropped his lids, veiling the light that he himself was conscious shone in them.

"Very well, If you want me to stay, stay it is. But I'd like to go. And if there is danger, why not let me take your place? I should not know as much as you, but I would obey the captain's orders, and I am as strong as you are. Better let me go if there's any chance of not returning," he said.

"Your valuable young life for mine, my boy? Hardly that!" said Stephen Hopkins with a comradely arm thrown across the boy. "I shall always be a piece of drift from the old shore; you will grow from your youth into the New World's life. And what would my remnant of life be to me if my eldest born had purchased it?"

"You are young enough, Father," began Giles, struggling not to show that the expression of his father's love moved him as it did.

Mistress Eliza, who had been watching and listening to what was said with scornful impatience, broke in.

"Let the lad go. He will not be helpful here, and your little children need your protection, not to speak of your wife, Mr. Hopkins."

At the first syllable Giles had hastened away. Stephen Hopkins turned on her. "The boy is more precious than I am. It is settled; he is to stay. Take great care of the packet I have entrusted to you," he said.

For four days the ship's carpenters had busied themselves in putting together and making ready the shallop which the Mayflower had carried for the pilgrims to use in sailing the shallow waters of the bays and rivers of the new land, to discover the spot upon which they should decide to make their beginning.

The small craft was ready now, and in the morning set out, taking a small band of the men who had crossed on the Mayflower, as much ammunition and provisions as her capacity allowed them, to proceed no one knew whither, to encounter no one knew what.

Constance stood wistfully, anxiously, watching the prim white sail disappear.

Humility Cooper and Elizabeth Tilley—the cousins, who, though Constance's age, seemed so much younger—and Priscilla Mullins—who though older, seemed but Constance's age—were close beside her, and, seated on a roll of woollen cloth, sat Rose Standish, drooping as now she always drooped, often coughing, watching with her unnaturally clear eyes, as the girls watched, the departure of the little craft that bore their beloved protectors away.

The country that lay before them looked "wild and weather-beaten." All that they could see was woods and more woods, stretching westward to meet the bleak November sky, hiding who could say what dangers of wild beasts and yet more-savage men?

Behind them lay the heaving ocean, dark under the scudding clouds, and which they had just sailed for two months of torture of body and mind.

If the little shallop were but sailing toward one single friend, if there were but one friendly English-built house beside whose hearth the adventurers might warm themselves after a handclasp of welcome! Desolation and still more desolation behind and before them! What awful secrets did that low-lying, mysterious coast conceal? What could the future hold for this handful of pilgrims who were to grapple without human aid with the cruelties of a severe clime, of preying creatures, both beast and human?

Rose Standish's head bent low as the tipmost point of the shallop's mast rounded a promontory, till it rested on her knees and her thin shoulders heaved. Instantly Constance was on her knees before her, gently forcing Rose's hands from her face and drawing her head upon her shoulder.

"There, there!" Constance crooned as if to a baby. "There, there, sweet Rose! What is it, what is it?"

"Oh, if I knew he would ever come back! Oh, if I knew how to go on, how, how to go on!" Rose sobbed.

"Captain Myles come back!" cried Constance, with a laugh that she was delighted to hear sounded genuine.

"Why, silly little Rose Standish, don't you know nothing could keep the captain from coming back? Wouldn't it be a sorry day for an Indian, or for any beast, when he attacked our right arm of the colony? No fear of him not coming back to us! And how to go on, is that it? In your own cozy little house, with Prissy and the rest of us to help you look after it till you are strong again, and then the fair spring sunshine, and the salt winds straight from home blowing upon you, and you will not need to know how to go on! It will be the rest of us who will have to learn how to keep up with you!"

"Kind Constance," whispered Rose, stroking the girl's cheek and looking wistfully into her eyes as she dried her own. "You keep me up, though you are so young! Not for nothing were you named Constantia, for constant indeed you are! I will be good, and not trouble you. Usually I feel sure that I shall get well, but to-day—seeing Myles go——. Sometimes it comes over me with terrible certainty that it is not for me to see this wilderness bloom."

"Just tiredness, dear one," said Constance, lovingly, and as if she were a whole college of learned physicians. "Have no fear."

Mistress Hopkins came in search of them, carrying the baby Oceanus with manifest protest against his weight and wailing.

"I have been looking for you, Constantia," she said, as if this were a severe accusation against the girl. "You are to take this child. Have I not enough to do and to put up with that I must be worn threadbare by his crying? And what a country! Your father has been tormenting me with his mending and preparation for this expedition so that I have not seen it as it is until just now. Look at it, only look at it! What a place to bring a decent woman to who has never wanted! Though I may not have been the fine lady that his first wife was, yet am I a comfortable farmer's daughter, and Stephen Hopkins should not have brought me to a coast more bleak and dismal than the barrens of Sahara. Woods, nothing but woods! And full of lions, and tigers, and who knows what other raving, raging wild vermin—who knows? What does thy father mean by bringing me to this?"

Constance pressed her lips together hard, a burning crimson flooding her face as she took the baby violently thrust upon her and straightened his disordered wrappings, reminding herself that his mother was not his fault.

"Why as to that, Mistress Hopkins," said Priscilla Mullins in her downright, sensible way, "Mr. Hopkins did not bring you. We all came willingly, and I make no doubt that all of us knew quite well that it was a wilderness to which we were bound."

"There is knowing and knowing, Priscilla Mullins, and the knowing before seeing is a different thing from the knowing and seeing. Stephen Hopkins had been about the world; he even set sail for Virginia, which as I understand is somewhere not far from Cape Cod, though not near enough to give us neighbours for the borrowing of a salt rising, or the trade of a recipe, or the loan of a croup simple should my blessed babe turn suffocating as he is like to do in this wicked cold wind; and these things are the comforts of a woman's life, and her right—as all good women will tell thee before thou art old enough to know what the lack is in this desolation. So it is clear that Stephen Hopkins had no right to bring me here, innocent as I was of what it all stood for, and hard enough as it is to be married to a man whose first wife was of the gentry, and whose children that she left for my torment are like to her, headstrong and proud-stomached, and hating me, however I slave for them. And your father, Constantia Hopkins, has gone now, not content with bringing me here across that waste o' waters, and never is it likely will come back to me to look after that innocent babe that was born on the ocean and bears its name according, and came like the dove to the ark, bearing an olive branch across the deluge. But much your father cares for this, but has gone and left me, and it is no man's part to leave a weak woman to struggle alone to keep wild beasts and Indians from devouring her children; and so I tell you, and so I maintain. And never, never have I looked upon a scene so forsaken and unbearable as that gray woodland that the man who swore to cherish me has led me into."

Constance quite well knew that this hysterical unreason in her stepmother would pass, and that it was not more worth heeding than the wind that whistled around the ship's stripped masts. Mistress Eliza had a vixenish temper, and a jealous one. She frequently lashed herself into a fury with one or another of the family for its object and felt the better for it, not regarding how it left the victim feeling.

But though she knew this, Constance could not always act upon her knowledge, and disregard her. She was but a very young girl and now she was a very weary one, with every nerve quivering from tense anxiety in watching her father go into unknown danger.

She sprang to her feet with a cry.

"Oh, my father, my father! How dare you blame him, my patient, wise, forbearing father! Why did he bring you here, indeed! He—so fine, so noble, so hard-pressed with your tongue, Mistress Hopkins!—I will not hear you blame him. Oh, my father, my dear, dear, good father!" she sobbed, losing all sense of restraint in her grief.

Suddenly on hearing this outburst, Mistress Hopkins, as is sometimes the way of such as she, became as self-controlled as she had, but a moment before, been beside herself. And in becoming quiet she became much more angry than she had been, and more vindictive.

"You speak to me like this?—you dare to!" she said in a low, furious voice. "You will learn to your sorrow what it means to flout me. You will pay for this, Constantia Hopkins, and pay to the last penny, to your everlasting shame and misery."

Constance was too frightened by this change, by this white fury, which she had never seen before in her stepmother, to answer; but before she could have answered, Doctor Fuller, who had strayed that way in time to hear the last of Dame Eliza's tirade, Constance's retort, and this final threat, took Constance by the arm and led her away.

"Quiet, my dear, quiet and calm, you know! Don't let yourself forget what is due to your father's wife, to yourself, still more to your conscience," he warned her. "And remember that a soft answer turneth away wrath."

"Oh, it doesn't, Doctor Fuller, indeed it doesn't!" sobbed Constance, utterly unstrung. "I've tried it, tried it again and again, and it only makes the wrath turn the harder upon me; it never turns it away! Indeed, indeed I've faithfully tried it."

"It's a hard pilgrimage for you at times I fear, Constance, but never turn aside into wrong on your part," said the good doctor, gently.

"Oh, I'm sorry I flared up, I am sorry I spoke angrily. But my father! To blame him when he is so patient, and has so much to endure! Must I beg his wife's pardon?" said Constance, humbly.

Doctor Fuller concealed a smile. Sorry as he was for Constance, and indignant at her stepmother's unkindness, it amused him to note how completely in her thoughts Constance separated herself from the least connection with her.

"I think it would be the better course, my dear, and I admire you for being the one to suggest it," he answered, with an encouraging pat on Constance's sleeve.

"Well, I will. I mean to do what is right, and I will," Constance sighed. "But I truly think it will do no good," she added.

"Nor I," Doctor Fuller agreed with her in his thoughts, but he took good care not to let this opinion reach his lips.

[CHAPTER IV]

The First Yuletide

Constance had a tender conscience, quick to self-blame. She was unhappy if she could impute to herself a fault, ill at ease till she had done all that she could to repair wrong. Although her stepmother's dislike for her, still more her open expression of it, was cruelly unjust and prevented all possibility of love for her, still Constance deeply regretted having spoken to her with lack of respect.

But when she made humble apology for the fault and begged Mrs. Hopkins's pardon with sweet sincerity, she was received in a manner that turned contrition into bitterness.

Dame Eliza looked at her with a cold light in her steely blue eyes, and a scornful smile. Plainly she was too petty herself to understand generosity in others, and construed Constance's apology into a confession of fear of her.

"Poor work spreading bad butter over a burnt crust," she commented. "There's no love lost between us, Constantia Hopkins; maybe none ever found, nor ever will be. I don't want your fair words, nor need you hope your father will not one day see you, and that sullen brother of yours, as do I. So waste no breath trying to get around me. Damaris is fretting; look after her."

Poor Constance! She had been so honestly sorry for having been angry and having given vent to it, had gone to her stepmother with such sincerity, hoping against hope, for the unnumbered time, that she could make their relation pleasanter! It was not possible to help feeling a violent reaction from this reception, to keep her scorned sweetness from turning to bitterness in her heart.

She told the story to Giles, and it made him furiously angry.

"You young ninny to humble yourself to her," he cried, with flashing eyes. "Will you never learn to expect nothing but injustice from her? It isn't what we do, or say; it is jealousy. She will not let our father love us, she hates the children of our mother, and hates our mother's memory, that she was in every way Mistress Eliza's superior, as she guesses, knowing that she was better born, better bred, and surely better in character. I remember our mother, Con, if not clearly. I'm sorry you have not even so much recollection of her. You are like her, and may be thankful for it. I could trounce you for crawling to Mistress Hopkins! Learn your lesson for all time, and no more apologies! Con, I shall not stand it! No matter how it goes with this colony, I shall go back to England. I will not stay to be put upon, to see my father turned from me."

"Oh, Giles, that could never be!" cried Constance. "Father will never turn from us."

"I did not say from us; I said from me," retorted Giles. "You are different, a girl, and—and like Mother, and—several other reasons. But I often see that Father is not sure whether he shall approve me or not. It will not be so long till I am twenty-one, then I shall get out of reach of these things."

Constance's troubled face brightened. To her natural hopefulness Giles's twenty-first birthday was far enough away to allow a great deal of good to come before it.

"Oh, twenty-one, Giles! You'll be prospering and happy here before that," she cried.

"But I must tell no more of troubles with my stepmother to Giles," she added mentally. "It will never do to pile fuel on his smouldering fires!"

The next day when Constance was helping Mistress Hopkins with her mending, she noticed the oilskin-wrapped packet that her father had left with his wife for safe keeping, tossed carelessly upon the hammock which swung from the side of the berth which she and her stepmother shared, the bed devised by ingenuity for little Damaris.

"Is not that packet in Damaris's hammock Father's packet of valuable papers?" Constance asked. "Is there not a risk in letting them lie about, so highly as he prizes them?"

She made the suggestion timidly, for Dame Eliza did not take kindly to hints of this nature. To her surprise her stepmother received her remark not merely pleasantly, but almost eagerly, quick with self-reproach.

"Indeed thou art right, Constantia, and I am wrong to leave it for an instant outside the strong chest, where I shall put it under lock and key," she said, nevertheless not moving to rescue it. "I have carried it tied around my neck by a silken cord and hidden in my bosom till this hour past. I dropped it there when I was trying to mend Damaris's hammock. Thanks to you for reminding me of it. What can ail that hammock defies me! I have tried in all ways to strengthen it, but it sags. Some night the child will take a bad fall from it. Try you what you can make of it, Constantia."

"I am not skilful, Stepmother," smiled Constance. "Giles is just outside studying the chart of our voyage hither. Let me call him to repair the hammock. We would not have you fall at night and crack the pretty golden pate, would we, Damaris?" The child shook her "golden pate" hard.

"That you would not, Connie, for you are good, good to me!" she cried.

Mistress Hopkins looked on the little girl with somewhat of softening of her stern lips, yet she felt called upon to reprimand this lightness of speech.

"Not 'Connie,' Damaris, as thou hast been often enough told. We do not hold with the ungodly manner of nicknames. Thy sister is Constantia, and so must thou call her. And you must not put into the child's head notions of its being pretty, Constantia. Beauty is a snare of the devil, and vanity is his weapon to ensnare the soul. Do not let me hear you again speak to a child of mine of her pretty golden pate. As to the hammock if you choose to call your brother to repair it for his half-sister I have nothing against the plan."

Constance jumped up and ran out of the cabin.

"Giles, Giles, will you come to try what you can do with Damaris's sleeping hammock?" she called.

"What's wrong with it?" demanded Giles, rising reluctantly, but following Constance, nevertheless.

"I don't know, but Mistress Hopkins says she cannot repair it and that the child is like to fall with its breaking some night," said Constance, entering again the small, close cabin of the women. "Here is Giles, Mistress Hopkins; he will try what he can do," she added.

Giles examined the hammock in silence, bade Constance bring him cord, and at last let it swing back into place, and straightened himself. He had been bent over the canvas with it drawn forward against his breast.

"I see nothing the matter with the hammock except a looseness of its cords, and perhaps weakness of one where I put in the new one. You could have mended it, Con," he said, ungraciously, and sensitive Constance flushed at the implication that her stepmother had not required his help, for she never could endure anything like a disagreeable atmosphere around her.

"Giles says 'Con,'" observed Damaris, justifying herself for the use of nicknames.

"Giles does many things that we do not approve; let us hope he will not lead his young sister and brother into evil ways," returned her mother, sourly. "But thou shouldst thank him when he does thee a service, not to be deficient on thy side in virtue."

"You know Giles doesn't need thanks for what he does for small people, don't you, Hop-o-my-Thumb?" Giles said and departed, successful in both his aims, in pleasing the child by his name for her, and displeasing her mother.

Two hours later Constance was sitting rolled up in heavy woollens like a cocoon well forward of the main mast, in a sheltered nook, reading to Rose Standish, who was also wrapped to her chin, and who when she was in the open, seemed to find relief from the oppression that made breathing so hard a matter to her.

Mistress Hopkins came toward them in furious haste, her mouth open as if she were panting, one hand pressed against her breast.

"Constantia, confess, confess, and do not try to shield thy wicked brother!" she cried.

"'Constantia, confess—confess and do not try to shield thy wicked brother'"

"Confess! My wicked brother? Do you mean the baby, for you cannot mean Giles?" Constance said, springing to her feet.

"That lamb of seven weeks! Indeed, you impudent girl, I mean no such thing, as well you know, but that dreadful, sin-enslaved, criminal, Gile——"

"Hush!" cried Constance, "I will not hear you!"

There was a fire in her eyes that made even Mistress Eliza halt in her speech.

"Giles Hopkins has stolen your father's packet, the packet of papers which you saw in the hammock and reminded me to put away," she said, more quietly. "I shall leave him to be dealt with by your father who must soon return. But you, you! Can you clear yourself? Did you help him steal it? Nay, did you call him in for this purpose, warning him that he should find the packet there, and to take it? Is this a plan between you? For ever have I said that there was that in you two that curdled my blood with fear for you of what you should become. Not like your godly father are you two. From elsewhere have you drawn the blood that poisons you. Confess and I will ask your father to spare you."

Constance stood with her thick wrappings falling from her as she threw up her hands in dumb appeal against this unbearable thing. She was white as the dead, but her blue eyes burned black in the whiteness, full of intense life.

"Mistress Hopkins, oh, Mistress Hopkins, consider!" begged Rose Standish, also rising in great distress. "Think what it is that you are saying, and to whom! You cannot knowingly accuse this dear girl of connivance in a theft! You cannot accuse Giles of committing it! Why, Captain Myles is fonder of the lad than of any other in our company! Giles is upright and true, he says, and fearless. Pray, pray, take back these fearful words! You do not mean them, and when you will long to disown them they will cling to you and not forsake you, as does our mad injustice, to our lasting sorrow. What can be more foreign to our calling than harsh judgments, and angry accusations?"

"I am not speaking rashly, Mistress Standish," insisted Dame Eliza.

"Not yet three hours gone Constantia saw lying in Damaris's hammock a valuable packet of papers, left me in trust by her father. I asked her to mend the hammock, which was in disorder, but she called her brother to do the simple task. No one else hath entered the cabin at my end of it since. The packet is gone. Would you have more proof? Could there be more proof, unless you saw the theft committed, which is manifestly impossible?"

"But why, good mistress, should the boy and girl steal these papers? What reason would there be for them to disturb their father's property?" asked Rose Standish.

"I have heard my uncle say, who is a barrister at home, that one must search for the motive of a crime if it is to be established." She glanced with a slight smile at Constance's stony face, who neither looked at her, nor smiled, but stood gazing in wide-eyed horror at her stepmother.

"Precisely!" triumphed Dame Eliza. "Two motives are clear, Mistress Standish, to those who are not too blinded by prejudice to see. Those Hopkins girl and boy hate me, fear and grudge my influence with their father. Would they not like to weaken it by the loss of papers entrusted to me, a loss that he would resent on his return? There is one motive. As to the other: you do not know, but I do, and so did they, that part of these papers related to an inheritance in England, from which they would want their half-brother and sister excluded. Needs it more?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Rose Standish, as Constance groaned. "To any one knowing Giles and Constance this is no more than if you said Fee, fi, fo, fum! They plotting to weaken you with their father! They stealing to keep the children from a share in their inheritance, so generous as they are, so good to the little ones! Fie, Mistress Hopkins! It is a grievous sin, you who are so strict in small matters, a grievous sin thus to judge another, still more those to whom you owe the obligation of one who has taken their dead mother's place."

Constance began to tremble, and to struggle to speak. What she would have said, or what would have come of it, cannot be known, for at that moment the Billington boys, John and Francis, came hurtling down upon them, shouting:

"The shallop, the shallop is back! It is almost upon us on the other side. Come see, come see! Dad is back, and all the rest, unless the savages have killed some of them," Francis added the final words in solo.

The present trouble must be laid aside for the great business in hand of welcome.