he
this life of toil and privation, this constant contention with such
foes as famine, and disease, and squalor, and uncouth savagery? Look at
the portrait painted of him in London some years later, and see if there
is not an infinite weariness, a brooding _Cui bono?_ set as a seal upon
those haughty features. Can one after studying that face much wonder
that when the Massachusetts Bay authorities in 1646 besought Plymouth to
spare their sometime governor, their wise and astute statesman, to
arrange the Bay's quarrel with the Home government, Winslow eagerly
accepted the mission, although as Bradford sadly records, his going
was--"much to the weakening of this government, without whose consent he
took these employments upon him."

So well, however, did he fill the larger sphere for which his ambitious
nature perhaps had secretly pined, that after four years of arduous
service when the Massachusetts quarrel was well adjusted, and Winslow
would have returned home, President Steele, whom he had helped to found
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, wrote to the Colonial
Commissioners in New England that although Winslow was unwilling to be
kept longer from his family, he could not yet be spared, because his
great acquaintance and influence with members of Parliament made him
invaluable to the work in hand.

Then in 1652 the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, placed him at the head of a
committee for settling a Dutch quarrel; and in 1655 the same power named
him governor of Hispaniola, and dispatched him thither with a fleet and
body of soldiers to conquer and take possession of his new territory.
But General Venable in command of the soldiers, and Admiral Penn in
command of the fleet, fell to loggerheads as to which was the other's
superior, and even Winslow's diplomacy could not heal the breach; so the
attack upon Hispaniola proved a disgraceful failure, and as the fleet
sailed away to attack Jamaica, the Great Commissioner, as they called
him fell ill of chagrin and worry, and after a few days of wild delirium
wherein he stood upon Burying Hill, and drank of the Pilgrims' Spring,
and spoke loving words to the wife and children he should see no more,
he died, and was committed to the great deep with a salute of
two-and-forty guns, and never a kiss or tear, for all who loved him were
far away.

But all this honor, all this disaster, lies in the future, for as yet
Winslow is only seven-and-twenty, and yet the lines of