The brief and bald civil service soon was said, the hearty salutes bestowed, and the sturdy handshaking over; then Governor Bradford, with an air at once paternal and courtly, led the bride to the head of the principal table, and the feast, upon which the skill of a select committee of our old friends had expended itself, began. But too many feasts have been described, and I dare not tell of the glories of this, save only of the great wedding-cake, with its choice frostwork of flowers and foliage, shaped by Betty Pabodie’s nimble fingers,--a cake to be carved with much ceremony, and amid much mirth and jubilation, by the bride’s own hand, with the gold ring hidden somewhere amid its sweets for the next bride, and the toy half of a scissors for the man doomed to be an old bachelor. But at last all was over; the hunter’s moon, whose culmination had fixed the date of the wedding, hung glorious in heaven, shedding almost the light of day; the neighbors’ horses were saddled and pillioned, and the boats of those who came from farther afield were manned and ready; Alice Bradford, muffling herself in cloak and hood for the voyage, was changing a last word with Priscilla and Barbara, while sweet Alice Richards, her daughter-in-law, was deep in baby lore with Betty Pabodie, and the governor and the captain outside the door were by chance left for a moment quite alone. Turning by a common impulse--one of those impulses we all have felt compelling us to undreamed-of action,--they faced each other and grasped hands. “I’m glad you came, Will,” said the captain. “Ay, and so am I. ’Tis many a year since first we clasped hands in old Amsterdam, Myles.” “More years than there are months between this and our last hand clasp, friend.” “God knows--God alone knows.” “Mind you of that other moonlight night, Will, when you and I stood by my girl’s new-made grave, and you moved me to bury my revenge with her?” “I’ve thought of it more than once to-night, more than once.” “He’s dead.” “What, your cousin?” “Yes. The man that slighted my maid. He’s dead and buried.” “And revenge of thought as well as deed is buried with him, Myles, is it not?” “H--m! Now, that’s a fight where I’m willing to cry craven. See you here, Will, the Lord that made me fashioned me out of mere mortal clay, and his work stands fast in spite of my good will or yours to change it. While I was a young fellow, I fought the Spaniards and the Turks; in my lustyhood, I fought the Indians and the wilderness; and now, in mine age, I fight Myles Standish and the devil; and though I’ve as good a stomach for hard knocks as most men, I feel betimes ’twill not be a sorry thing to undo harness, hang up Gideon, and lay me down to rest and sleep.” “Not yet, old friend, not yet! We came on pilgrimage together, and we’ll march shoulder to shoulder into the holy city,--that is, if God will.”