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

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

Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the friend whom most he had trusted!
Ah! 'twas too much to be borne, and he fretted and chafed in his armour!

"I alone am to blame," he muttered, "for mine was the folly.
What was a rough old soldier, grown grim and gray in the harness,
Used to the camp and its ways, to do with the wooing of maidens ?
'Twas but a dream,-let it pass,-let it vanish like so many others!
What I thought was a flower, is only a weed, and is worthless;
Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw it away, and henceforward
Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and wooer of dangers!"'
Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry defeat and discomfort,
While he was marching by day or lying at night in the forest,
Looking up at the trees, and the constellations beyond them.

After a three days' march he came to an Indian encampment
Pitched on the head of a meadow, between the sea and the forest ;
Women at work by the tents, and the warriors, horrid with war-paint,
Seated about a fire, and smoking and talking together;
Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach of the white men,
Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate, and sabre, and musket,
Straightway leaped to their feet, and two from among them advancing,
Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs as a present;
Friendship was in their looks, but in their hearts there was hatred.
Braves of the tribes were these, and brothers gigantic in stature,
Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, king of Bashan;
One was Pecksuot named, and the other was called Wattawamat.
Round their necks were suspended their knives in scabbards of wampum,
Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as sharp as a needle.
Other arms had they none, for they were cunning and crafty.

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

traders

Touching at times on the coast, to barter and chaffer for peltries.
Then in their native tongue they began to parley with Standish,

Through his guide and interpreter, Hobomok, friend of the white man,
Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for muskets and powder,
Kept by the white man, they said, concealed, with the plague, in his cellars,
Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the red man!
But when Standish refused, and said he would give them a Bible,
Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast and to bluster,
Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride in front of the other,
And, with a lofty demeanour, thus vauntingly spake to the Captain :
"Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of the Captain,
Angry is lie in his heart; but the heart of the brave Wattawamat
Is not afraid at the sight. He was not born of a woman,
But on a mountain, at night, from an oak-tree riven by lightning,
Forth he sprang at a bound, with all his weapons about him,
Shouting, Who is there here to fight with the brave Wattawamat?
Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the blade on his left hand,
Held it aloft, and displayed a woman's face on the handle,
Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister meaning:

I have another at home, with the face of a man on the handle;
By and by they shall marry; and there will be plenty of children!"
Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, insulting Miles Standish :
While with his fingers he patted the knife that hung at his bosom,
Drawing it half from its sheath, and plunging it back, as he muttered,
By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ah! but shall speak not!

This is the mighty Captain the white men have sent to destroy us: He is a little man; let him go and work with the women!"

Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and figures of Indians Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in the forest, Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their bow-strings, Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of their ambush. But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated them smoothly; So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days of the fathers. But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt, and the insult,

All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston de Standish, Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples. Headlong he leapt on the boaster, and snatching his knife from its scabbard, Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage

Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness upon it.

Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop,
And, like a flurry of snow, on the whistling wind of December,

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

Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came the lightning,
Out of the lightning thunder; and death unseen ran before it.
Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp and in thicket,

Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the brave Wattawamat,
Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift had a bullet

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

There on the flowers of the meadow the warriors lay, and above them, Silent with folded arms, stood Hobomok, friend of the white man. Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stalwart Captain of Plymouth : "Pecksuot bragged very loud, of his courage, his strength, and his stature,— Mocked the great Captain, and called him a little man; but I see now

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

Thus the first battle was fought and won by the stalwart Miles Standish. When the tidings thereof were brought to the village of Plymouth,

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

Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was a church and a fortress, All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, and took courage.

Only Priscilla averted her face from the spectre of terror.

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

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

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

VIII.

THE SPINNING-WHEEL.

MONTH after month passed away, and in Autumn the ships of the merchants Came with kindred and friends, with cattle and corn for the Pilgrims. All in the village was peace; the men were intent on their labours, Busy with hewing and building, with garden-plot and with mere-stead, Busy with breaking the glebe, and mowing the grass in the meadows, Searching the sea for its fish, and hunting the deer in the forest. All in the village was peace; but at times the rumour of warfare Filled the air with alarm and the apprehension of danger.

Bravely the stalwart Miles Standish was scouring the land with his forces, Waxing valiant in fight and defeating the alien armies,

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

Anger was still in his heart, but at times remorse and contrition,
Which in all noble natures succeed the passionate outbreak,
Came like a rushing tide, that encounters the rush of a river,
Staying its current a while, but making it bitter and brackish.

Meanwhile Alden at home had built him a new habitation,
Solid, substantial, of timber rough-hewn from the firs of the forest.
Wooden-barred was the door, and the roof was covered with rushes;
Latticed the windows were, and the window-panes were of paper,
Oiled to admit the light, while wind and rain were excluded.

There too he dug a well, and around it planted an orchard :
Still may be seen to this day some trace of the well and the orchard.
Close to the house was the stall, where, safe and secure from annoyance,
Raghorn, the snow-white steer, that had fallen to Alden's allotment
In the division of cattle, might ruminate in the night-time
Over the pastures he cropped, made fragrant by sweet pennyroyal.

Oft when his labour was finished, with eager feet would the dreamer Follow the pathway that ran through the woods to the house of Priscilla, Led by illusions romantic and subtile deceptions of fancy,

Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the semblance of friendship.
Ever of her he thought, when he fashioned the walls of his dwelling;
Ever of her he thought, when he delved in the soil of his garden;
Ever of her he thought, when he read in his Bible on Sunday
Praise of the virtuous woman, as she is described in the Proverbs,—
How the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her always,
How all the days of her life she will do him good and not evil,
How she seeketh the wool and the flax and worketh with gladness,
How she layeth her hand to the spindle and holdeth the distaff,
How she is not afraid of the snow for herself or her household,
Knowing her household are clothed with the scarlet cloth of her weaving!

So as she sat at her wheel one afternoon in the Autumn,
Alden, who opposite sat, and was watching her dexterous fingers,
As if the thread she was spinning were that of his life and his fortune,
After a pause in their talk, thus spake to the sound of the spindle.
"Truly, Priscilla," he said, "when I see you spinning and spinning,
Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others,
Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed in a moment;
You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beautiful Spinner."
Here the light foot on the treadle grew swifter and swifter; the spindle
Uttered an angry snarl, and the thread snapped short in her fingers,
While the impetuous speaker, not heeding the mischief, continued:
"You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, the Queen of Helvetia ;
She whose story I read at a stall in the streets of Southampton,
Who, as she rode on her palfrey, o'er valley and meadow and mountain
Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff fixed to her saddle.
She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed into a proverb.
So shall it be with your own, when the spinning-wheel shall no longer
Hum in the house of the farmer, and fill its chambers with music.
Then shall the mothers, reproving, relate how it was in their childhood,
Praising the good old times, and the days of Priscilla the spinner!"
Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful Puritan maiden,

Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him whose praise was the sweetest,
Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of her spinning.

Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering phrases of Alden :

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

Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of husbands;

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

Then who knows but hereafter, when fashions have changed and the manners,
Fathers may talk to their sons of the good old times of John Alden!
Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his hands she adjusted,
He sitting awkwardly there, with his arms extended before him,

She standing graceful, erect, and winding the thread from his fingers,
Sometimes chiding a little his clumsy manner of holding,
Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled expertly

Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares-for how could she help it ;-
Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in his body.

Lo! in the midst of this scene, a breathless messenger entered,
Bringing in hurry and heat the terrible news from the village.

Yes; Miles Standish was dead!—an Indian had brought them the tidings,—
Slain by a poisoned arrow, shot down in the front of the battle,
Into an ambush beguiled, cut off with the whole of his forces;
All the town would be burned, and all the people be murdered!
Such were the tidings of evil that burst on the hearts of the hearers.
Silent and statue-like stood Priscilla, her face looking backward
Still at the face of the speaker, her arms uplifted in horror;
But John Alden, upstarting, as if the barb of the arrow
Piercing the heart of his friend had struck his own and had sundered
Once and for ever the bonds that held him bound as a captive,
Wild with excess of sensation, the awful delight of his freedom
Mingled with pain and regret, unconscious of what he was doing,
Clasped, almost with a groan, the motionless form of Priscilla,
Pressing her close to his heart, as for ever his own, and exclaiming :
"Those whom the Lord hath united, let no man put them asunder!"
Even as rivulets twain, from distant and separate sources,
Seeing each other afar, as they leaped from the rocks, and pursuing
Each one its devious path, but drawing nearer and nearer,
Rus' together at last, at their trysting-place in the forest ;
So these lives that had run thus far in separate channels,

Coming in sight of each other, then swerving and flowing asunder,
Parted by barriers strong, but drawing nearer and nearer,
Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the other.

IX.

THE WEDDING-DAY.

FORTH from the curtain of clouds, from the tent of purple and scarlet, Issued the sun, the great High-Priest, in his garments resplendent, Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, on his forehead, Round the hem of his robe the golden bells and pomegranates. Blessing the world he came, and the bars of vapour beneath him Gleamed like a grate of brass, and the sea at his feet was a laver !

This was the wedding-morn of Priscilla the Puritan maiden.
Friends were assembled together; the Elder and Magistrate also
Graced the scene with their presence, and stood like the Law and the Gospel,
One with the sanction of earth and one with the blessing of heaven.

Simple and brief was the wedding, as that of Ruth and of Boaz,
Softly the youth and the maiden repeated the words of betrothal,
Taking each other for husband and wife in the Magistrate's presence,
After the Puritan way, and the laudable custom of Holland.
Fervently then, and devoutly, the excellent Elder of Plymouth

Prayed for the hearth and the home, that were founded that day in affection,
Speaking of life and of death, and imploring divine benedictions.

Lo! when the service was ended, a form appeared on the threshold,
Clad in armour of steel, a sombre and sorrowful figure!

Why does the bridegroom start and stare at the strange apparition?
Why does the bride turn pale and hide her face on his shoulder?
Is it a phantom of air,-
-a bodiless, spectral illusion?

Is it a ghost from a grave, that has come to forbid the betrothal ?
Long had it stood there unseen, a guest uninvited, unwelcomed;
Over its clouded eyes there had passed at times an expression
Softening the gloom and revealing the warm heart hidden beneath them,