trade,
was hurriedly overlooking, and sundry great brass and copper kettles,
household necessities of that epoch, and descending as relics to us who
look upon them with respectful wonder as memorial brasses of the "giants
of those days."

A flock of women, all demurely and plainly dressed, although the most of
them were under thirty years of age, stood waiting at the head of the
ladder until the cargo was stored, and Howland, sending his assistants
back on deck, planted himself upon the gunwale of the boat, and holding
out his hand to a stout, solid-looking woman with a young girl beside
her said,--

"Mistress Tilley, you had best come first, for you will be apt at
helping the others, as I hand them down. And thou, too, Elizabeth, if
thou wilt."

"And Constance Hopkins and Remember Allerton," pleaded the girl,
lifting a sweet, saucy face to the young man; "we never are separated,
for we're all of an age, all going on sixteen you know."

"Hush, Bess, thou 'rt malapert," chided her mother, descending heavily
into the boat, while a mutinous young voice above called out,--

"Nay, I'm not going. Stepmother won't spare me."

"Now Constance Hopkins, thou naughty hussy, wilt thou grumble at
tarrying with me to care for thine own dear sister and brother? Fie on
thee, girl!"

"They're not my own," grumbled Constance in Remember Allerton's ear.
"Giles is my own brother and he is to go, and Damaris and Oceanus are
but half sister and brother, and she's but my stepmother."

"Hush, now, or she'll hear and thou 'lt come by a whipping," whispered
Remember hastily, as Dame Hopkins turned from Mistress Winslow who had
spoken to her, and came toward the girls. "I'll stay aboard with thee,
Constance, and help thee with the babies."

"Thou 'rt a dear good wench and I love thee," replied Constance in the
same tone, and, as the stepmother placed the muffled baby in her arms,
she took him without comment, and went below followed by Elizabeth
Tilley.

Two trips of the capacious boat sufficed to carry women, clothes,
utensils, and assistants across the three quarters of a mile of shallow
water lying between the brig and the shore, and the boys who went in the
first boat were at once set to work to gather dry stuff from the
thickets of scrub oak and pine sparsely clothing the beach, and to build
several fires along the margin of a large pool or perhaps pond of fresh
water divided from the harbor by a narrow beach of firm white sand.