s pale and fragile wife sat looking up at him with beseeching
eyes.

"Nay, William, she is hardly older than our own dear girls, and it would
ill become us who still carry our own lives in our hands to deprive a
poor silly maid of hers."

"So the best road out of the maze is to cure the captain," remarked
Doctor Fuller dryly. "After that we'll marry the girl to John Howland,
and trust him to keep her quiet. Here they come."

And in at the open door came the governor and Howland, Desire and
Priscilla, who carried in her hand a little box full of half-dried
leaves, which she presented to the doctor, who solemnly pulling from his
pocket a pair of clumsy iron-bowed spectacles put them astride his nose,
and taking the herbs to the window carefully examined them, while all
the rest stood anxiously around staring with all their might.

"Hm! Hah! Yes, well yes, I see, I see!" murmured the botanist, and then
turning to Bradford he fixed him with a meditative gaze over the tops of
his barnacles and said,--

"You know something of botany, Governor. Say you not that this is the
_Platanthera Satyrion_, the herb supposed to give vigor to the hearts of
those wild men whom the mythologists celebrate?"

"Is it? I should have taken it for the iris whose flower I have noted in
these swamps."

"'T is akin, ay, distant kin, but with the difference that maketh one
harmless, and 't other deadly. I will take it to Sister Winslow's house
and examine it with my books, but still I can aver at once that 't is
Platanthera; and if it is also Satyrion I will promise that it shall
prove only nauseous and distasteful to our good Captain, and by no means
deadly. I will go to see him."

"And John Howland," said the Governor turning toward the young man who
stood looking with aversion at the figure of Desire, who with her head
in her apron wept loud and angrily, "it seemeth to me that since this
maid is betrothed to you, and is manifestly unfit to guide herself, that
it is best for you to marry her here, and now, and after that train her
into more discretion than she naturally showeth."

"May it please you, Master Bradford, and you, Elder," replied Howland
coldly, "it seemeth to me that a woman who shows so little modesty in
the pursuit of one man is scarce fit wife for another. I did indeed
promise my late dear mistress whose ward this girl was, that I would
care for her, and if need be take her to wife; but sure am I that if
that godly and di