“Ay, ay, doubtless you as a church-member are bound to find some such way out of the thing; but to the mind of a plain old sea-dog like Bill Pierce ’tis a marvelous merry tale, with no moral tacked to the end on’t.” And possibly this conversation had something to do with the fact that when Thanksgiving Day came round, Priscilla Carpenter became the wife of William Wright. CHAPTER XX. BETTY’S JOURNEY AND THE GARRETT WRECK. “Betty, child, thou’rt not well. Thy little face is so peaked and pined I hardly know my winsome lassie. What is’t, maiden?” “Oh, father, I don’t know”-- “Nay, don’t cry, my poppet! Come here and tell daddy all the trouble.” “Well, father, I’m so tired of seeing our neighbors carried up the hill, and I’m looking for them to carry us too.” “What! Here, mother, come and tell me what our little maid may mean. She says she’s tired of seeing our neighbors going up the hill, and she cries as if her little heart would break.” The mother did not at once reply, but, laying her hand upon the child’s head as it nestled upon her father’s breast, she looked sadly out of the window, and said, “We had better have stayed over at Duxbury another month, John.” “Why, so we would have done, wife, and indeed ’tis a loss to come back to the town so early; but you know the governor desired it, because in so much sickness our good doctor could not go far afield, and when Jo was taken down he bade me bring you all in. Another year, if God will, I mean to establish our home for winter as well as summer by the Bluefish. But what about the hill, Betty?” persisted the father. “Why does it daunt thee to see the folk go up the hill?” “Because they’re dead, father, and they carry them up to bury them!” cried Betty in a wild burst of sobs; and Priscilla, nodding, pointed out of the window to a little procession just passing the house, where four men bore upon a rude hand-bier a coffin covered with a black pall, the corners held by four younger men. Behind walked a score or so of mourners, all men, with long crape scarfs tied around their hats. No clergyman attended, for religious solemnities at funerals were studiously avoided by the Separatists, lest haply they might seem to infringe upon the hidden councils of the Almighty in regard to souls withdrawn from the sphere of human influence. A gloomy and a hopeless affair they made of death, those men who dreaded popery as they did Satan, and loved John Calvin, recently gone to test his own sunless theories. “Betty, dear,” exclaimed the mother suddenly, “there’s little Molly crying in her cradle! Run, dear, and hush her, and sit by the cradle till I come.” The obedient child sprang to obey, and so soon as she was gone Priscilla softly said,--