"It's only a half-moon," said Barbara critically; but we went. On our way, we went up to look at the town from the site of the old Watch-Tower, on the very top of Burial Hill. We climbed the Hill this time by the path nearest the sea. The low branches of the twisted tree over the flight of steps made strange patterns above us against the sky. There is one place on the summit where you can look out into the darkness of the country, not toward the lights of town. Here you can see only the shadows of the elm branches and the outlines of the slanting stones. And here, I think, we found the time for the spirit of place to be abroad. We did not see the kindly ghosts of Adoniram Judson and Bathsheba Bradford and Captain Jabez Harlow. But we were in the midst of something very real. All the odd phrasings of the epitaphs--the relicts and consorts and phyticians--were hidden now, translated by the shadows. We saw only the silhouette of the past; and it was not grim or gloomy, but only brave. The record of antique sorrow is a quieting thing. Every thought on this hill was thought a long time ago. The poignancy is out of it now. And as we stand on the spot where the Pilgrims once set watch every night for danger, we cannot help being stirred by the gray dignity of their thoughts about the continuity of life. We stayed only a moment. Then we went down again, pausing only to watch the harbor lights. Plymouth harbor is a quiet place by moonlight, and Burial Hill is a very quiet place. Yet it gave us the most direct message we had--of spacious thought dramatized in narrow setting, of definite achievement with inadequate equipment, of the resourceful valiance of those early people, and of what Governor Bradford calls "their great patience and allacritie of spirit" in the face of life, and death. CHAPTER II JOHN ALDEN AND MILES STANDISH THEIR LAND Duxbury, Duxberie, Duxborough, Ducksborrow: the early writers spelled it as they pleased. But the Duxbury Light, Duxbury ships, and Duxbury clam-flats have standardized the spelling for all time. This town, across the harbor from Plymouth, where grants of land were settled by Myles Standish, Elder Brewster, and John Alden, has been the home port of notable ships and men. Merchant-ships, brigs, and schooners--the Eliza Warwick and the Mary Chilton, the Oriole, the Lion, Boreas, and Seadrift, the Triton, Mattakeeset, and the Hitty Tom,--these and hundreds of sail besides were built here in the shipyards and manned by Duxbury boys. Among the early men of Duxbury were Benjamin Church, who captured Philip the Sachem; Major Judah Alden and Colonel Ichabod, descendants of John Alden and Priscilla; Colonel Gamaliel Bradford and Captain Gamaliel, his son; George Partridge, one of George Washington's Congressmen; and Ezra Weston, the King Caesar of the shipyards.