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 wi