with Dame Alice's comfitures; and when I fancy one new-wed pair
were as content without me, I'll e'en go and inflict myself upon
t' other."

"And the captain will keep house with only Hobomok," said Priscilla
dubiously.

"Nay, Kit Conant is to 'bide with them, and do certain service, and I
shall still be in and out," said Barbara briskly. "Like enough the most
they eat will be of my brewing. We shall do well enow for the captain.
But, Priscilla, what ailed thee not to wed him, since his comfort sits
so nigh thy heart?"

"Why, 't is but Christian to pity them who are in need, yet none can wed
with more than one man at a time, and from the first I knew that John
Alden was the one for me. Wed him thyself, Barbara, and send Kit Conant
about his business."

A sudden color surged all over Barbara's face, and the wonderful eyes
shot out an angry spark, but after a moment she quietly said,--

"Myles and I have ever been more like brother and sister than cousins.
His mother was all as one with mine own."

"Ay, and so it is. Yes, yes, I see," said Priscilla hurriedly, but when
Barbara had left her she stood for many minutes drumming on the table,
and thoughtfully gazing through the open door at the blue wonder of the
sea.

And now the wedding day had come, a glorious golden summer day, and some
of the older folk, whose habits of early life held rigidly to the soil
since planted anew to a Separatist crop, remembered that it was Lammas
Day. One of these was Elizabeth, Master Warren's new-come wife, and as
she looked abroad in the early morning, she sighed a bit and said,--

"A year agone, Richard, I looked upon another guess sort of scene than
this. The church bells were ringing and the people trooping in, and many
was the goodwife who brought her loaf baked of the first-fruit wheat to
offer it for the parson's table if not for the Communion"--

"Nay wife, nay, remember Lot's wife," chided the husband, already so far
upon his way to that abode of Light where shall be no Separatism and no
uncharity.

As all the world would fain be present at one or the other of the four
marriages, it was concluded that they should be held in the open air,
and the captain with much enthusiasm directed the spreading of an open
tent, or, more properly, a canopy upon the greensward stretching across
the King's Highway from Bradford's house to Hopkins's.

This completed, and the military band paraded ready to salute the
governor upon his ar