and with a curious expression of
content and disapproval upon his face the captain went away to so
arrange and order his plan, that at sunrise on the third day a guard of
twelve men, including the elder, presented themselves at the house of
mourning, and receiving the coffin upon the crossed barrels of their
muskets carried it along the brow of the hill to the grave newly opened
amid the springing wheat.

Mistress Carver had made but one request, and that of piteous
earnestness,--

"See that they make his grave where another may be dug close beside,"
pleaded she, and John Howland had seen that it was as she desired.

Earth to earth was reverently and silently laid, the grave was covered
in, and then, at the captain's signal, the twelve muskets were fired in
relays of four, and their mournful echo mingled with the sobbing dirge
of the waves breaking upon the Pilgrim Rock, while the dense column of
smoke rising grandly to heaven was the only monument then or ever
erected to John Carver, that willing martyr and gallant gentleman who
had indeed "given his life for the brethren."

Returning to the Common house the Guard of Honor joined with the rest of
the townsmen in a Council, whereat they elected William Bradford to be
their second Governor, and as he now lay ill in his bed, Isaac Allerton
was chosen to be his Assistant and mouthpiece.

Bradford, neither over elated nor daunted by his new dignities, accepted
the nomination, and with few and brief intervals retained it until his
own death some four-and-thirty years later, and nobly and faithfully
did he perform its duties.

About a week after Carver's funeral the new governor, now convalescent,
received a visit from Edward Winslow, who sought him with the formal
request that he as chief magistrate of the colony would perform the
marriage ceremony between him and Susanna, widow of William White.

For the Separatists during their sojourn in Holland had accepted the
creed of that nation of traders, and held with them that marriage is
merely a civil contract, requiring a magistrate to secure the proper
amount of goods to each party, and make sure that neither defrauded the
other. As for the sacramental blessing of the Church, said the Dutchman
and the Separatist, it costs money and bestows none, and priests are
ever dangerous associates, so we'll none of them or their craft.

Apart from this view of the matter however, the civil authority was the
only one available in