VII.

THE MARCH OF MILES STANDISH.

MEANWHILE the stalwart Miles Standish

Standish was

marching steadily northward,

Winding through forest and swamp, and along the trend of the sea-shore,

All day long, with hardly a halt, the fire of his

anger

Burning and crackling within, and the sulphurous odor of powder

Seeming more sweet to his nostrils than all the

scents of the forest.

Silent and moody he went, and much he revolved his discomfort;

He who was used to success, and to easy victories

always,

Thus to be flouted, rejected, and laughed to scorn by a maiden,

Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the friend whom most he had trusted!

Ah! 't was too much to be borne, and he fretted and chafed in his armor!

"I alone am to blame," he muttered, "for mine was the folly.

What has a rough old soldier, grown grim and gray in the harness,

Used to the camp and its ways, to do with the wooing of maidens ?

'Twas but a dream,-let it pass,-let it vanish like so many others!

What I thought was a flower is only a weed, and is worthless;

Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw it away, and henceforward

Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and wooer of

dangers!"

Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry defeat and

discomfort,

While he was marching by day or lying at night in the forest,

Looking up at the trees, and the constellations beyond them.

After a three days' march he came to an Indian

encampment

Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea

and the forest;

Women at work by the tents, and the warriors,

horrid with war-paint,

Seated about a fire, and smoking and talking to

gether;

Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach of the white men,

Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and sabre and musket,

Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, from among them advancing,

Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs as a present;

Friendship was in their looks, but in their hearts there was hatred.

Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers gigantic in stature,

Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, king

of Bashan;

One was Pecksuot named, and the other was called Wattawamat.

Round their necks were suspended their knives in scabbards of wampum,

Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as sharp as a needle.

Other arms had they none, for they were cunning and crafty.

"Welcome, English!" they said, - these words

they had learned from the traders

Touching at times on the coast, to barter and chaffer for peltries.

Then in their native tongue they began to parley with Standish,

Through his guide and interpreter, Hobomok, friend of the white man,

Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for muskets and powder,

Kept by the white man, they said, concealed, with the plague in his cellars,