Such acts were part of the customs of those times, and the elders of Plymouth approved of the Captain's deed, but one elder, named John Robinson, who was the religious leader of them all, cried out as he passed the fort, "Oh, that he had converted some before he killed any!" If Miles Standish had flared up in anger when John Alden first told him the result of his suit of Priscilla that anger dropped as quickly as it rose. The Captain had many other matters to think about, what with the constant fear of attack from restless Indians, and he was away from Plymouth almost as much as he was there. So the lovers lost the feeling that they had not been fair to him, and let it be known through Plymouth that they were to marry. Meanwhile the Pilgrim village was prospering. Food was plentiful, for the first harvest had been good, and the hunters had brought in deer and the fishing-boats returned well-laden from the sea. Therefore the Governor ordered a day of thanksgiving late in the autumn, and when that day came the people went to the fortress-church on the hill and gave thanks to God that He had allowed them to endure and prosper in their new home. Later in the day they feasted, and never had Plymouth seen such a plentiful repast. Word of the feast had been sent to some of the neighboring Indians and ninety of them came and sat about the board with the white men. That was the beginning of our Thanksgiving Day. John Alden was busy building a new house for his bride. He could build better now than the settlers had been able to do when they faced that first winter. He chose his ground with care, and built a substantial home, covering the roof with rushes, and filling the latticed windows with panes of oiled paper, which let the light come through but not the wind or rain. He dug a well and planted an orchard at the rear of the house, and when the place was finished it was one of the finest in Plymouth. In the spring Priscilla and John were married, their wedding being one of the earliest in the colony, and Priscilla being the first of the girls who had sailed on the _Mayflower_ to change her name. History does not tell us a great deal about this girl of the Pilgrims, but we do know how much courage and faith and constancy was required of the first settlers of New England. We picture Priscilla as the daughter of such people, devout, simple, and from force of the rude life about her growing more and more self-reliant from the day when Mary Chilton and she first set foot on Plymouth Rock. History does not tell us of Priscilla's wooing, but the romantic story has been so wonderfully put in poetry by Longfellow that when we hear Priscilla Alden mentioned we think first of all of "The Courtship of Miles Standish." It is a story which ought to be true, if it is not.