MEANWHILE the stalwart Miles Standish was marching steadily northward,

INWHIL

was m

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,

MILES STANDISH

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! 'twas 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 together;
Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach of the white men,