“Put on her shoes, and fold the train of her robe around her feet,” commanded the father. “She said it should be so.” And wonderingly the mother obeyed, for in these awful hours none dared to intrude upon the darkness that clothed Standish more gloomily than the mantle the Angel of Death had lightly laid around the maiden. Once in the middle of the night, Barbara, rising from her sleepless couch, sought him where he sat alone with Lora, and throwing herself upon her knees beside him, her arms around him, and her head upon his breast, she cried,-- “Oh, Myles, Myles, let us try to bear it together. Do not shut me out of your heart. Oh, Myles, my heart is breaking--comfort me!” “Hush, wife, hush! What need of words or clamor? Let her rest, let her rest--and leave us alone, good wife, my maid and me--go!” Then chilled, silenced, well-nigh affrighted, the mother crept away, and left the defeated soldier to his own bitter retrospect. The brothers, working day and night, fashioned an oaken casket, not of the gruesome shape in use at a later date, but more like a dainty cradle, and the women had spread in it a couch of sweet herbs and the fragrant tips of the balsam fir and the blossoms of the immortelle which they called life-everlasting. A pillow of dried rose-leaves and lavender-blossoms and the hop-flowers that soothe to dreamless slumber was laid ready for the gentle head, and a sheet of fine linen was spread over all. “The captain said when he brought home that bolt of Hollands linen from Antwerp, that it was for Lora’s wedding clothes,” sobbed Barbara, as she drew the shining folds from the chest that held her most valued household treasures, and Priscilla Alden, with an arm around her friend’s neck, kissed her, and bit her tongue lest it should say in spite of her, “Had he let her marry Wrestling Brewster, she might have needed wedding clothes of another sort from these.”