d many a stately home is his,' that was
what Barbara told me about thee afterward; and when I praised thy
presence, for I loved thee or ever I knew it myself, she straightened
her neck and said full proudly, 'Ay, and not only a goodly man, but a
brave soldier and noble soul.' 'Twas she who first saw that thou lovedst
me, Myles, and came and wept for joy upon my neck."

"Peace, peace, dear child. Thou wastest thy strength in talking
overmuch. Sleep, canst thou not, dear heart?"

"Dost think that Barbara will come hither? She promised me surefast that
she would so soon as there was a company ready. She said it was so
lonely there in Man when I was gone. Will she come, think you, Myles?"

"Like enow, sweetheart. Barbara mostly carries out what she promises.
But"--

"And thou 'lt be very, very good to thy cousin, wilt thou not, Myles?
Thou 'rt all she has now."

"Surely both of us will be good to our kinswoman, dear wife, and all the
more that, as thou sayest, it was by going to visit her that I first saw
thee, blooming like a very rose in that gray old Manx churchyard."

"I was ever friends with Barbara, but I loved her all the more for thy
sake, dear. And she was well pleased that we two should wed--leastways
she said so."

"And if she said it she meant it, for in all the years she tarried in my
mother's house I never knew her tell a lie or wear two faces. But now,
verily, child, I must have thee rest. Speak not again unless thou
needest somewhat. I will have it so, my Rose."

"Then let me lay my hand in thine. There, then, good-night."

"Good-night, mine own."

And while the winter night lapsed through hours of deadly chill and
darkness into the sad twilight of early morning the soldier sat
motionless, holding that fragile hand, gazing upon that lovely face,
lovely yet so changed from the cherubic beauty that had won his heart
amid the summer fields of Man but three short years before.

What he thought, what he felt in those hours, he could not himself have
revealed, for a man's emotion is usually in inverse proportion to its
expression, and Myles Standish was essentially a man of action and not
of words; but God only knows how these strong inarticulate natures
suffer in the agony that divides bone from marrow, and yet leaves the
sufferer conscious of the capacity to live and to suffer yet again and
again.

In some respects this vigil resembled that of Bradford in hearing of
Dorothy's death, in some it was