"Nay, Father, let me speak freely!" Constance implored. "Indeed there is nothing in my heart that you would disapprove, could I bare it to your eyes. Does not this day's experience throw a light upon Giles?" "Giles! How? Why?" exclaimed her father. "Giles is as like you as are two peas in a pod, dear Father. He does not count himself a boy any longer. He hath felt that he was dealt with for offences that he had not done. He has been wounded, angry, sore, sad--and most of all because he half worships you. The governor, Mr. Winslow, no one is to you, nor can hurt you, as you can hurt Giles. Don't you feel to-day, Father, how hard it is for a young lad to bear injustice? When Giles comes home will you not show him that you trust him, love him, as I so well know you do, but as he cannot now be made to believe you do? And won't you construe him by what you have suffered this day, and comfort him? Forgive me, Father, my dearest, dearest! I do not mean wrong, and after all, it is only your Constance speaking her heart out to you," she pleaded. For upwards of ten minutes Stephen Hopkins was silent while Constance hung trembling on his arm. Then her father turned to her, and took her face in both his hands, tears in his eyes. "It is only my Constance speaking; only my dearest earthly treasure," he said. "And by all the gods, she hath spoken sweetly and truly, and I will heed her! Yes, my Constance, I will read my own bitterness in Giles's heart, and I will heal it, if but the lad comes back safe to us." With which promise, that sounded in Constance's ears like the carol of angels, her father kissed her thrice on brow, and lips, a most unusual caress from him. It was a thankful Constance that lay down beside Damaris that night, beneath the lean-to roof. "Now I know that Giles will come back, for this is what has been meant in all that hath lately come to us," was her last thought as she drifted into sleep. CHAPTER XV The "Fortune," that Sailed, First West, then East "There's a ship, there's a sail standing toward us!" It was Francis Billington's shrill boyish voice that aroused the Hopkins household with this tidings, early in the morning on one of those mid-November days when at that hour the air was chill and at noon the warmth of summer brooded over land and sea. Stephen Hopkins called from within: "Wait, wait, Francis, till I can come to thee." In a moment or two he came out of his door and looked in the direction in which the boy pointed, although a hillock on the Hopkins land, which lay between Leyden and Middle streets, cut off the sight of the sail. "She's coming up from the south'ard," cried Francis, excitedly. "Most like from the Cape, but she must have come from England first, say you not so, Mr. Hopkins?"