So serious a matter as this could not be suffered to pass unnoticed by the authorities, and with some grave expressions of regret and an assurance of honorable treatment, Captain Cromwell was placed under arrest and lodged in the strong-room of the Fort under guardianship of Lieutenant Holmes, while a messenger was dispatched to Captain’s Hill to summon Standish to a conference with the governor and the others of his council; for the sailor had requested to be tried by a court martial, and who but the General Officer of all the Colonies could organize and head it? With the great captain came Lieutenant Nash, and Ensign-bearer Constant Southworth, with Hatherley, Alden, Willett, Cudworth, and other of the Duxbury men, so that for some days Plymouth assumed the air of a garrisoned place in time of war, much to the delight of Gillian, and perhaps some other of the lonely maids of the almost deserted town. The court martial, formal and dignified in its proceedings and absolutely just in its dealings, lasted for a whole day, and much testimony to Cromwell’s generous and humane treatment of his men was rendered, as well as a good deal most unfavorable to the character of the dead man, who seems to have been a very drunken and brutal fellow. The only possible testimony as to the rencontre was that of Gillian, and this she was most anxious to be permitted to give in person before the court; but here both Bradford and Brewster interposed, and insisted that a written affidavit made and sworn before the governor should be accepted, a course indorsed by Standish with great alacrity. In the end Cromwell was acquitted, but not without an exhortation from Parson Rayner, the Chaplain of the Commission, to greater reverence and tenderness for human life, to which the prisoner listened respectfully, but Standish with a covert smile playing around the sadness of his mouth, as he recalled a similar reproach long ago made to him by John Robinson, now many years gone to his rest. Perhaps as a mark of respect to the court martial that had tried and acquitted him, possibly as a late testimony to his tenderness for human life, Cromwell’s first act as a free man was to order a military funeral for Voysye, and to request the presence of the train band of Plymouth, to every member of which he presented a piece of black taffeta to make a mourning cloak. “And now I will marry you,” said Gillian, when next she saw her lover alone; but he, with a queer smile, replied,-- “Think better of it, my dear! my money is well-nigh spent, and I feel it in my bones that the next court martial will order me to be shot. You’ll make a poor bargain, and that’s not to your mind.”