Only Master Simon, his wife and his daughter, Margeret, knew the real reason why his garden and fields had greater success than any other’s, knew of the ceaseless labour and genuine love that he expended upon his plants and flowers. Margeret loved them also, and would often rise early and go out with him to weed the hills of Indian corn, water the long beds of sweet-smelling herbs or coax some drooping shrub back to life and bloom. It was pleasant to be abroad then, when the grey mists lying over the wide, quiet harbour began to lift and turn to silver, when the birds were singing in the great forest near by and the dark-leaved bayberry bushes dropped their dew like rain when she brushed against them. Then she would see, also, mysterious forms slipping out of the dark wood, the graceful, silent figures of the friendly Indians, who also got up before the dawn and came hither for long talks with their good friend, Master Simon. They brought him flowers, roots and herbs that grew in this new country, while he, in turn, gave them plants sprung from English seed, taught them such of the white men’s lore as might better their way of living and offered much sage counsel as to the endless quarrels that were always springing up among them between tribe and tribe. “It is strange and not quite fitting that those heathen savages should follow you about like dogs,” the villagers used to tell him, a little jealous, perhaps, that he should be as kind to his red-skinned friends as he was to his Puritan comrades. But Master Simon would only smile and go on his way, undisturbed by what they said. When the long, warm evenings came and Margeret and her mother brought their spinning wheels to the doorstep that they might use the last ray of daylight for their work, Master Simon would labour beside them, tending now the roses and the yellow evening-primroses before the cottage. And he would tell, as he worked, of those other primroses that grew in English lanes, of blossoming hedge-rows and soaring larks and all the other strange beauties of that dear country across the sea. Sometimes Margeret’s mother would bend her head low over her spinning to hide the quiet tears, as he told of the great, splendid garden where he had learned his skill with plants and herbs, a garden of long terraces and old grey sundials and banks of blooming flowers. It was there that he and she had walked together in the moonlight, and had planned, with hearts all unafraid, for the day when they should be married and should set sail for that new land that seemed so far away. But there was no sadness or regret in Master Simon’s heart. “Some day,” he would say, straightening up from his work and looking about him with a happy smile; “some day we shall have just such another garden planted here in the wilderness, at the very edge of the world that white men know.”