“There, my lad, that’s a Lancashire fall,” cried Standish with an angry laugh. “They didn’t teach you that in Clifford’s Inn, did they now?” “Oh, murder! murder! I’m but a dead man! Oh! Oh!” shrieked the voice of one of the besieged, and Standish turning sharply demanded,-- “Who gave the order to strike? Alden, how dare you attack without orders!”-- “I attacked nobody, Captain Standish,” replied John Alden more nearly in the same tone than he had ever addressed his beloved commander. “I carried my sword in my hand thus, and was making in to the house when this drunken fool stumbled out and ran his nose against the point. He’ll be none the worse for a little blood-letting.” “Two of my fellows were drunk, and one an arrant coward, or you had not made so easy a venture of your piracy,” snarled Morton viciously, and one of the younger of the Plymouth men would have dealt him a blow with the flat of his sword, but Standish struck it up saying sternly,-- “Hands off, Philip De la Noye, or you’ll feel the edge instead of the flat of my sword. Know you nothing, nothing at all of the usages of war that you would strike an unarmed prisoner!” A few moments more and the whole affair was over. Morton’s three men, foolish, worthless fellows, hardly dangerous even under his guidance, and perfectly harmless when deprived of it, were set at liberty with a stern warning from Standish that they were simply left at Merry Mount on probation, and that the smallest disobedience to the law prohibiting the sale of fire-arms, or instruction of the Indians in their use, would at once be known at Plymouth and most severely punished. “As for your Maypole, and your Indian blowzabellas, and your dancing and mummery,” concluded the captain, “I for one have naught to say, except that there must be some warlock-work in the matter to tempt even a squaw to frisk round a Maypole with such as you.” Morton, sullen, silent, and disarmed, was meantime led to the boat between Alden and Howland, the other men after, and last of all Standish muttering,-- “Better if there had been a garrison strong enough to hold the position. Then we might have burned the house and haply slain the traitor in hot blood.” CHAPTER IX. THE KYLOE COW. “Barbara! Wife!” “I am here, Myles, straining the milk. I shall make some furmety for supper. Even Lora begins to beg for it, and the boys dote upon it, little knaves!” “Let the furmety wait for a bit, and come out here to see old Manomet in the evening light. ’Tis a sight I never tire of.” “Ay, ’tis very fair,” replied Barbara coldly, as she came and sat for a moment upon the bench at the cottage door, where Myles was wont to smoke his pipe, and muse upon many matters never brought to words. A little lower down the hill Alick and his brother Myles were playing with John and Joseph Alden, while Betty, a stick in her hand, drove all four boys before her, she with mimic airs of anger and they of terror.