s of his fellows?"

"Shoot him through the head!" said the energetic Puritan. "I suspect
witchcraft in the beast."

"Here be a couple of shining ones," continued Peter Palfrey, pointing
his weapon at the Lord and Lady of the May. "They seem to be of high
station among these misdoers. Methinks their dignity will not be
fitted with less than a double share of stripes."

Endicott rested on his sword and closely surveyed the dress and aspect
of the hapless pair. There they stood, pale, downcast and
apprehensive, yet there was an air of mutual support and of pure
affection seeking aid and giving it that showed them to be man and
wife with the sanction of a priest upon their love. The youth in the
peril of the moment, had dropped his gilded staff and thrown his arm
about the Lady of the May, who leaned against his breast too lightly
to burden him, but with weight enough to express that their destinies
were linked together for good or evil. They looked first at each other
and then into the grim captain's face. There they stood in the first
hour of wedlock, while the idle pleasures of which their companions
were the emblems had given place to the sternest cares of life,
personified by the dark Puritans. But never had their youthful beauty
seemed so pure and high as when its glow was chastened by adversity.

"Youth," said Endicott, "ye stand in an evil case--thou and thy
maiden-wife. Make ready presently, for I am minded that ye shall both
have a token to remember your wedding-day."

"Stern man," cried the May-lord, "how can I move thee? Were the means
at hand, I would resist to the death; being powerless, I entreat. Do
with me as thou wilt, but let Edith go untouched."

"Not so," replied the immitigable zealot. "We are not wont to show an
idle courtesy to that sex which requireth the stricter discipline.--What
sayest thou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of the
penalty besides his own?"

"Be it death," said Edith, "and lay it all on me."

Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor lovers stood in a woeful case.
Their foes were triumphant, their friends captive and abased, their
home desolate, the benighted wilderness around them, and a rigorous
destiny in the shape of the Puritan leader their only guide. Yet the
deepening twilight could not altogether conceal that the iron man was
softened. He smiled at the fair spectacle of early love; he almost
sighed for the inevitable blight of early hopes.

"The tr