fraught
with danger and uncertainty; and where they feared he might again be
exposed to the vengeance of his untiring foe.

The gallant little band marched down the hill, and came where Edith and
her child stood waiting, beneath a tree, for what might be their last
look on one most dearly loved; and when Rodolph saw them he forgot the
strictness of discipline and order required by his commander, and left
the ranks to indulge the feelings of his heart, by again embracing his
weeping wife and child.

The stern captain instantly recalled him; and when he saw a tear
glistening in the eye of the husband and father, a slight expression of
wonder and contempt passed over his countenance. He marveled that so
brave a soldier and so strict a Puritan as Rodolph Maitland should
still remain subject to so much worldly weakness. But Standish was not,
at that time, a married man; and he was very deeply imbued with all the
severe and unbending principles of his sect, which even went so far as
to demand the suppression of all natural feelings--making it a fault
for a mother to kiss her children on the Lord's day--and inflicting
actual punishment on the captain of a ship for having embraced his wife
on 5 Sunday, when, after a long separation, she hurried to meet him, as
he landed from the vessel! To such puerile littlenesses will even great
minds descend.

Rodolph was unmoved by the commander's contemptuous glance. He knew his
own unflinching Puritan principles, and his own undaunted courage; and
he knew his value in the eyes of Standish. The captain knew it also,
for he never liked to go on any enterprise that required bravery and
cool judgement without securing the aid of Maitland; and although the
tenderness of his friend's feelings, and the warmth of his domestic
attachments--so different to the coolness and apathy which was so
prevalent in the community--were a continual subject of surprise and
pity to the iron-hearted leader, yet he highly respected him, and even
loved him, as much as such a gentle feeling as love of any kind could
find admittance to his breast.

They journeyed on then--that stern captain, who had no tie to life, and
deemed it a privilege to die with 'the sword of the Lord and of Gideon'
in his hand, fighting for the cause of his own peculiar sect, in which
alone he thought salvation could be found; and that warm-hearted
husband and father, who felt that he had left behind him what was far
dearer than life its