As Priscilla listened to this glowing and eloquent eulogy, it only increased her admiration for the young and beautiful John Alden. She had long loved him. Maidenly instinct taught her that she also was beloved by him. Though this love had never been communicated to her in words, it had again and again been expressed in loud-speaking glances of the eye and in actions. With tremulous voice she ventured to reply, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” The tone, the look which accompanied the words, revealed at once, to the bashful youth, the love of Priscilla. A tempest of conflicting emotions rushed into his soul. How could the magnanimous youth plead his own cause, and thus apparently betray his friend. Perplexed, bewildered, he burst from the house, like an insane man; hurried to the sea shore, wandered along the sands, where the surf was breaking with loud roar; bared his head to the ocean breeze, and endeavored in vain to cool the fever, which seemed to burn in both body and soul. His tender conscience condemned him as being unfaithful to his friend. He could not, without a sense of guilt, supplant his friend; and he could not live in Plymouth and refuse the hand of Priscilla, so delicately and yet so decidedly proffered. Heroically he resolved to return to England. There was a vessel in the harbor which was to sail on the morrow. The poet speaks of it as the returning Mayflower. Chronology will hardly permit us to accept that representation. Rose Standish died on the 8th of February, N. S. The Mayflower sailed, on her return voyage, the 5th of April, but two months after the death of the wife Captain Standish so tenderly loved. As the frenzied youth gazed upon the vessel riding at anchor, and rising and falling upon the ocean swell, he exclaimed: “Back will I go o’er the ocean, this dreary land will abandon, Her whom I may not love, and him whom my heart has offended. Better to be in my grave, in the green old churchyard in England, Close by my mother’s side, and among the dust of my kindred; Better be dead and forgotten, than living in shame and dishonor Sacred and safe and unseen, in the dark of the narrow chamber With me my secret shall lie, like a buried jewel that glimmers Bright on the hand that is dust, in the chambers of silence and darkness, Yes, as the marriage ring of the great espousal hereafter.”