so
calling thee. Come now, my merry men, let me place you fairly, each with
his shoulder to the sun, each planted firmly on sound footing. There
then, that is as well as may be, and well enow. Come, one, two, three,
and lay on!"

But careful as Lister had been in securing and bringing away his
weapons, he had not escaped the scrutiny of two bright eyes hidden
behind the curtain dividing the nook where Constance Hopkins and her
sister Damaris slept, from the main room of the dwelling, and no sooner
had the young man left the house than Constance hastily followed, and
running lightly up the hill to where the Captain with John Alden at his
side was roofing in an addition to his half-built house she cried,--

"Captain Standish, I fear me there's mischief afoot with Edward Dotey
and Edward Lister!"

"Ay? And what makes thee think so, my lass?" asked Standish peering down
from his coign of vantage. "Where are they?"

"My father sent them afield this morning to rive and pile firewood, but
a few minutes agone Edward Lister came creeping into the house and up to
the loft where they two and Bartholomew sleep, and I who was below heard
the clank of steel, and peeping saw that he brought down two swords and
had stuck two daggers in his belt"--

"Aha! Swords and daggers, my young masters!" exclaimed the Captain,
hastily descending the ladder beside which Constance stood. "John, drop
thy hammer and take thy piece; nay, take a good stick in hand, and we
will soon bring these springalds to order. Whereaway are they, girl?"

"That-a-way, sir; nay, see you not Lister's cap bob up and down as he
runneth behind yon bushes?"

"Ay, lass, thou hast a sharp eye. Go home and rest content--thou 'rt a
wise and good child."

Ten minutes later the captain and his follower plunging through the
underwood fringing Watson's Hill heard the clash of steel upon steel and
a coarse voice crying,--

"Well played, Dotey! Nay, 't is naught but a scratch--don't give over
for that, Lister; up and at him again, boy! Get thy revenge on him!"

"That knave Billington!" growled Standish: "I could have sworn he was in
it! Here you! Stop that! Drop your blades, men! Drop them!"

Lister and Dotey, nothing loth, for both were wounded, obeyed the
summons, and staggering back from each other stood leaning upon their
swords and panting desperately, while Billington dexterously stepping
backward behind an elder bush made his way forest-ward with a stealthy
foot