remaining to the door of the Fort, where entered the dignitaries
and as many more as could find room. Here in the great room now used as
a place of worship a group of matrons and maids awaited them, with
Barbara in their midst, fair and stately in her white robes, the glory
of her eyes outvying any jewels she could have worn.

The meagre civil service was spoken by the governor, but at the request
of both bride and bridegroom the elder made a prayer to which the
captain listened more reverently than his wont, and cried Amen more
heartily.

Then they came forth these two Standishes made one, and the train band
escorted them to their home, and fired a salute of honor, whose
reverberating waves rolling across the waters broke at last upon the
foot of Captain's Hill, sighing away into silence over the quiet plain
where one day should be dug a warrior's grave, marked head and foot with
a great three-cornered stone.

CHAPTER XL.

"PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW."

And so, tenderly, reluctantly, lingeringly we leave them, these dear
ones whose memory we cherish so lovingly, and in the sober reality of
whose lives lies a charm no romance can ever reach.

Would you know more of them, for there are, as the Sultana promised
morning by morning, stranger and better things to come than these that
have been told, go read the annals of the Pilgrims, those precious
fragments left to us by Bradford and by Winslow, and a letter written by
De Rasieres, Secretary of the Dutch Colony at Manhattan, who, visiting
Plymouth upon a diplomatic errand in 1627, wrote to his superiors a
letter preserved in the Royal Library of Holland wherein he draws this
little picture of the town we have tried to reproduce, and mentions some
of these dear friends whose lives we know so much better than he did.

"New Plymouth lies on the slope of a hill, stretching east toward the
sea-coast with a broad street about a cannon shot long, leading down the
hill with a cross street in the middle going southward to the rivulet,
and northward to the land. The houses are constructed of hewn planks,
with gardens also enclosed behind, and at the sides, with hewn planks,
so that their houses and court-yards are arranged in very good order,
with a stockade against a sudden attack; and at the ends of the streets
there are three wooden gates. In the centre on the cross street stands
the Governor's house, before which is a square erection upon which four
patereros