Didst thou ever hear then, or didst thou ever read in thy books, of
planting fish along with corn?"

"Nay. Didst thou?"

"That is what I am coming at. A lot of the men are talking with this
Squanto about the place and time and manner of setting corn. Naturally
the poor brute knoweth somewhat of the place and its customs, seeing
that he hath always lived here, and still it irks me to see a salvage
giving lessons to his white masters. He saith too that corn is to be
planted when the oak leaves are as large as a mouse's ear. Such rotten
rubbish!"

"But doth he aver that his people were used to plant fish with the
corn?"

"Ay, and he went down to the brook yester even and set some manner of
snare, and this morning hath taken a peck or so of little fish, for all
the world like a Dutch herring only bigger, and of these he says two
must go into every hill of the corn, that is, this corn of theirs, for
of wheat or rye or barley he knoweth nothing."

"By way of enrichment, I suppose."

"Ay, for in his gibberish he saith that corn hath been raised hereabout
again and again, and now the land is hungry. Ha, ha, man, fancy the
salvage calling the dead earth hungry, as if it were alive."

"Our dear mother Earth dead, sayst thou!" exclaimed Bradford smiling
dreamily and glancing at his Virgil. "Nay, man, she is the vigorous
fecund mother of all outward life, and when she dieth, the end of all
things hath come."

"A pest on thy dreaming and thy bookish phantasies!" roared Hopkins
kicking the smouldering log upon the hearth until a river of sparks
flowed up and out of the wide chimney. "Dost thou agree to putting fish
to decay amid the corn we are to eat by and by?"

"We are not to live by what we plant, but by what we reap, friend
Hopkins," replied Bradford still smiling in the inscrutable fashion of a
man who pursues his own train of thought far down beneath his surface
conversation.

"Dost thou agree to the herring?" roared Hopkins smiting the table with
his brawny fist.

"Why yes, Hopkins, if it needs that I give my sanction. It striketh my
fancy that the man who hath raised and eaten his bread on this spot for
some thirty years is like to know better how to do it than we who have
just come. But what matter as to my opinion?"

"Oh ay, I did not tell it as I should, but the governor sent me out of
the field to ask thee, knowing that thou wast yeoman born."

"Then I pray thee tell the Governor that in my poor mind it