Thus with another kiss, Constance turned back singing, to show to Giles how little she feared for him, and half laughing to herself, for she was still very young, and they had managed between them to give this important errand much of the effect of a boy-and-girl, masquerading frolic. Yet, always subject to sudden variations of spirits, Constance had not gone far before she sat down upon a rock and cried heartily. Then, having sung and wept over Giles, she went sedately homeward to await his return in a mood that savoured of both extremes with which she had parted from him. The waiting was tedious, but it was not long. Sooner than she had dared to hope for him, Giles came marching back to her, and as he sang as he came, at the top of a lusty voice, Plymouth knew before he could tell it that his errand had been successful. Giles went straight to Governor Bradford's house, whither those who had seen and heard him coming followed him. "There is our gift of war rejected," said Giles, throwing down the spotted snakeskin, still bulging with its bullets. "They would have naught of it, but picked it up and gave it back to me with much air of solicitude, and with many words, which I could not understand, but which I doubt not were full of the warmest love for us English. And I was glad to get back the stuffed snakeskin and our good bullets, for here, so far from supplies, bullets are bullets, and if any of our red neighbours did attack us we could not afford to have lessened our stock in object lessons. All's well that ends well--where have I heard that phrase? Father, isn't it in a book of yours?" Giles concluded, innocently unconscious that he was walking on thin ice in alluding to a play of Shakespeare's, and his father's possession of it. "You have done well, Giles Hopkins," said Governor Bradford, heartily, "both in your conception of this message, and in your bearing it to the Narragansetts. And so from them we have no more to fear?" "No more whatever," said Giles. "Nevertheless, from this day let us build a stockade around the town, and close our gates at night, appointing sentinels to take shifts of guarding us," said Myles Standish. "This incident hath shown me that the outlying savages are not securely to be trusted. I have long thought that we should organize into military form. I want four squadrons of our men, each squadron given a quarter of the town to guard; I want pickets planted around us, and at any alarm, as of danger from fire or foe, I want these Plymouth companies to be ready to fly to rescue." "It shall be as you suggest, Captain," said Governor Bradford. "These things are for you to order, and the wisdom of this is obvious." Constance and Giles walked home together, Constance hiding beneath her gown the plumes which she had first fastened into, then ripped out of Giles's hat.