another voice, as a shrewd, kindly looking man,
albeit with a certain whimsical cast to his thin features, approached
the pair; "Mistress Hopkins will do no washing to-day; no, nor even go
on shore to gather chill and weariness for my little friend Oceanus."

"'Will not,' shall not? Marry and who is to hinder, if you please, good
Master Fuller?" asked the young woman in a somewhat shrewish voice.

"I, Samuel Fuller, Licentiate of Cambridge, late practitioner of
Bartlemy's Hospital, London, and your medical adviser, madam," replied
the doctor with a dry smile and mocking bow. "Recall, if you please,
that Oceanus is not yet a fortnight old, and that both mother and child
are still my responsibility. Would you ruin my reputation, madam, not to
mention risking your own life and the boy's?"

"Have a care, Doctor, or some fine day you'll trip in your own quips,
and break your neck," replied Mistress Hopkins half sullenly, while her
husband cried,--

"He's right there, Bess. Thou 'rt in no case for such rough sport as
this is like to prove, and thou 'lt stay aboard whoever goes ashore."

"Yes, stay thou aboard and mind thy babe, and I'll take thy clothes
along with my own, so thou 'lt let Constance come to help me," suggested
the somewhat coarse voice of a woman standing by.

"Thank you kindly, goodwife Billington," replied Elizabeth Hopkins
coldly. "But Alice Rigdale hath already promised to do what is needed,
and Constance must stay with me to mind Damaris and Oceanus."

"Oh, if goodwife Rigdale has taken it in hand, I will step back,"
replied Mistress Billington sharply; and as she descended the
companion-way, Hopkins muttered in his wife's ear,--

"Now thou showest some sense, wench. The least thou hast to do with the
Billington brood the better I'll be pleased."

"That's worth working for, surely," retorted his wife, tossing her head
pettishly.

"I tell you there's no boat to be spared, and no man to row it, and I'll
have naught to say to it," exclaimed a surly voice from the
companion-way, and Captain Thomas Jones, master of the Mayflower, but
not of the Pilgrims, appeared on deck.

Captain Jones was not an amiable man, his training as buccaneer and
slaver having possibly blunted his finer feelings, and his consciousness
of present treachery probably increasing the irritability often
succeeding to a murdered conscience.

Such as he was, however, this man was the Inventor of Plymouth Rock,
since by his collu