ood draught as soon as may be, and have it heated if it
may be."

"Here, hand it me. I will go and give my friend Joseph a rating for
undertaking tasks beyond his strength, though belike the fault was none
of his!" And the doctor seizing the flask strode down the hill, while
Priscilla lingered to ask,--

"How doth Mistress Standish find herself to-day? I heard she was but
poorly."

"Ay, poorly enough," replied the Captain with a shadow chasing the smile
from his eyes. "She is hardly strong enough for these shrewd winds and
rough adventures. I had done better to leave her in England until we are
established somewhere."

"There's more than one in our company, I fear me, that has adventured
beyond their strength," replied Priscilla sadly, as she remembered her
mother's hectic flush and wasting strength and her brother's cough.

"A forlorn hope, perhaps, set to garrison this by-corner of the world,
but not forgotten by the Commander-in-chief, remember that, maid
Priscilla," said the captain kindly and cheerily. "There in the Low
Countries our worst trouble was that the home government never backed us
as they should, and more than once we felt we were forgot and neglected;
but in the warfare we have to wage here in the wilderness we can never
fear that."

"Yet soldiers may die at their post here as well as there," said
Priscilla, turning to go down the hill.

"So long as the work is done it matters little what becomes of the
soldier," replied Myles briefly, and the two rejoined the group around
the fires.

Before nightfall the clothes, dried and sweet with the sunshine and pure
air, were carefully folded into the tubs and kettles, the dinner was
neatly cleared away, and the whole company in several trips of the boats
conveyed on board, while the carpenters and their volunteer aids
remained to work while daylight lasted upon the pinnace, the Pilgrims'
own craft, intended for exploration along the shore, and for fishing
when they should have made a settlement.

But Joseph Molines had not shaken off his chill by means of the
captain's Hollands gin, nor did his mother or Rose Standish find
themselves better in the evening than they had been in the morning, and
as the darkness of the November night closed around the lonely bark,
gaunt shadowy forms, Disease and Famine and Death, seemed shaping
themselves among the clouds and brooding menacingly over the Forlorn
Hope, as its soldiers slept or watched beneath.