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“Maybe so–I don’t know,” said Margery, “but he hath had many a sore trouble in worldly things–driven and hunted from place to place in England, clapt into prison, and all he had eaten up with fines and charges and costs.”

“All that is because he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season,” said Rose; “he shall have his reward by and by.”

“Well, there be good men and godly in Old England that get to heaven in better coats and with easy carriages and fine houses and servants, and I would my master had been of such. But if he must come to the wilderness I will come with him. Gracious me! what noise is that?” she exclaimed, as a sudden report of firearms from below struck her ear. “I do believe there is that Frank Billington at the gunpowder; that boy will never leave, I do believe, till he hath blown up the ship’s company.”

In fact, it appeared that young master Frank, impatient of the absence of his father, had toled Wrestling Brewster and two other of the boys down into the cabin to show them his skill in managing his father’s fowling- piece, had burst the gun, scattering the pieces about the cabin.

Margery soon appeared, dragging the culprit after her. “Look here now, Master Malapert, see what you’ll get when your father comes home! Lord a mercy! here was half a keg of powder standing open! Enough to have blown us all up! Here, Master Clarke, Master Clarke, come and keep this boy with you till his father come back, or we be all sent sky high before we know.”

* * * *

At even tide the boat came back laden to the water’s edge with the first gettings and givings from the new soil of America. There is a richness and sweetness gleaming through the brief records of these men in their journals, which shows how the new land was seen through a fond and tender medium, half poetic; and its new products lend a savor to them of somewhat foreign and rare.

Of this day’s expedition the record is thus:

“That day, so soon as we could, we set ashore some fifteen or sixteen men well armed, with some to fetch wood, for we had none left; as also to see what the land was and what inhabitants they could meet with. They found it to be a small neck of land on this side where we lay in the bay, and on the further side the sea, the ground or earth, sand-hills, much like the downs in Holland, but much better; the crust of the earth a spit’s depth of excellent black earth; all wooded with oaks, pines, sassafras, juniper, birch, holly, vines, some ash and walnut; the wood for the most part open and without underwood, fit either to walk or to ride in. At night our people returned and found not any people or inhabitants, and laded their boat with juniper, which smelled very sweet and strong, and of which we burned for the most part while we were there.”

“See there,” said little Love Winslow, “what fine red berries Captain Miles Standish hath brought.”

“Yea, my little maid, there is a brave lot of holly berries for thee to dress the cabin withal. We shall not want for Christmas greens here, though the houses and churches are yet to come.”

“Yea, Brother Miles,” said Elder Brewster, “the trees of the Lord are full of sap in this land, even the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted. It hath the look to me of a land which the Lord our God hath blessed.”

“There is a most excellent depth of black, rich earth,” said Carver, “and a great tangle of grapevines, whereon the leaves in many places yet hung, and we picked up stores of walnuts under a tree–not so big as our English ones–but sweet and well-flavored.”