“Oho! ’Tis a cartel of battle, is it? Partlet against Chanticleer, eh? Well, our cousins the Standishes of Duxbury carry a gamecock for their crest, and I’ll e’en borrow his spurs.” “Oh, Myles, Myles! This over-weening ambition of thine hath turned thy brain! When till now didst ever treat me thus?” “Nay, I’ll not be wheedled with soft touch, nor tearful eyen, nor broken voice. There, there, let go mine arm and wipe thy tears away! Why, thou foolish lass, dost not know I’d liever face a tribe of Pequods than see thee weep? Tut, tut, silly wench, give me a kiss and be done with it. What chance hath Samson when Delilah cries?” “But, dear my lord, listen now that your mood is somewhat softened. How can you be so sure that this great marriage will make our dear maid happy? You know how tender and how sensitive she is; you know how she clings to love, and seems to draw her life from us as the flowers do from the sun; sure am I, as sure as of to-day’s breath, that parted from home and father and mother and brothers and friends and all she has ever loved and clung to, our Lora would droop and die just as that sea-bird did that the boys caught and tried to tame.” “And if she did!” cried the captain, flaming again into sudden wrath, the reflex perhaps of a stinging pain driven through his heart by his wife’s last words. “Had not she better die as mistress of Standish Hall and be buried with her ancestors in the tomb of the Standishes than to vegetate here as the wife of Wrestling Brewster and fill a nameless grave in these wilds?” “Since God has forsaken you and the Evil One seized upon your mind, I have naught more to say,” returned Barbara, thoroughly angry on her own side; and as she turned into the house Standish, with a black frown darkening his whole presence, strode away toward the hill. Almost an hour earlier Wrestling Brewster, making his way softly over the fallen leaves and ripe mosses of the hillside path, had stolen unawares upon as fair a picture as Captain’s Hill has ever seen, or ever shall while time and earth endure. Very nearly where the monument stands to-day, there then grew a clump of oaks, and between two of them had been fixed a commodious bench, with a back quaintly carved and ornamented with a border of red cedar. From this vantage-point could be seen a fairer view than that of to-day, for man had not yet conquered Nature, nor substituted his uncouth and commonplace works for her perfection.