offenders bound, and laid each upon his side on the bare ground, the
court withdrew and the crowd dispersed. But scarce an hour had passed
ere Hopkins presented himself before the governor and his assistant, at
work over the colony's records, those precious first minutes, now
forever lost, and with an elaborately quiet and restrained demeanor
said,--

"Master Bradford, yon poor knaves of mine are suffering shrewdly from
cramps and shooting pains as well as from the ache of their scarce
healed wounds. They promise in sad sincerity to amend their ways, and
when all is said, they are good and kindly lads, and did but ape the
fashions of their betters in the Old World. May not I persuade your
worship to look over their offense for this time, and to remit their
pains and penalties as soon as may be?"

"Thou sayest they are penitent, good Master Hopkins?" asked Bradford
judicially.

"Ay, and to my mind honestly so."

"We will speak with them, Master Allerton, and if the captain and the
elder agree with me, Master Hopkins, thy petition is granted, for indeed
it is to me more pain to make another suffer than to suffer myself, even
as a father feels the rod upon his own heart the while he lays it on his
son's back."

"And yet the warning that to spare the rod will spoil the child applies
to the children of the State as well as to the household," remarked
Allerton, whose lively son Bartholomew could have testified to his
father's strict obedience to Solomon's precept.

The chiefs of the colony were soon reassembled about the grotesque
figures of the suffering duelists, and with their approval, the governor
having demanded and received ample professions of contrition, and
promises of amendment, ordered Billington to release the prisoners, who
shamefacedly crept away to their master's house, and thus ended the
first and for many years the only duel fought upon New England soil.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE CAPTAIN'S PIPE.

It was a lovely evening in June, and, the labors of the day being ended,
while the hour for nightly devotion had not yet come, Plymouth enjoyed
an hour of rest.

Seven houses now lined The Street, leading from the Rock to the Fort,
and of these the highest on the northerly side was that of Captain
Standish, built so near to the Fort indeed, that John Alden, if so idly
minded to amuse himself, could easily salute each gun of the little
battery with a pebble upon its nose. He was in fact thus occupied o