"We clothe not the coffins of the dead with the filthy rags of Popery, and we pray not for the souls of them whom God hath taken into His own hand, for that were of the sins of presumption against which David doth specially pray, but yet,"--and the Elder's face softened, "I am of your mind, Captain, that we should honor our chief magistrate in the last service we can render him, and although by his own wish I ceased to pray for him ere the last breath was sped, and will never again pray for him or any parted soul, I well approve of such military honors as we are able to pay to his memory, and I will carry my musket with the rest, and fire it as you shall direct." "Why, that's more than ever I would have looked for, Elder," exclaimed Standish in amaze. "But since you so proffer, I gladly accept your aid and countenance, and by your leave, since as yet we have no governor in place of him who is gone, I will order the funeral by mine own ideas." "As a military man?" "Surely. I claim no spiritual powers," and with a curious expression of content and disapproval upon his face the captain went away to so arrange and order his plan, that at sunrise on the third day a guard of twelve men, including the elder, presented themselves at the house of mourning, and receiving the coffin upon the crossed barrels of their muskets carried it along the brow of the hill to the grave newly opened amid the springing wheat. Mistress Carver had made but one request, and that of piteous earnestness,-- "See that they make his grave where another may be dug close beside," pleaded she, and John Howland had seen that it was as she desired. Earth to earth was reverently and silently laid, the grave was covered in, and then, at the captain's signal, the twelve muskets were fired in relays of four, and their mournful echo mingled with the sobbing dirge of the waves breaking upon the Pilgrim Rock, while the dense column of smoke rising grandly to heaven was the only monument then or ever erected to John Carver, that willing martyr and gallant gentleman who had indeed "given his life for the brethren." Returning to the Common house the Guard of Honor joined with the rest of the townsmen in a Council, whereat they elected William Bradford to be their second Governor, and as he now lay ill in his bed, Isaac Allerton was chosen to be his Assistant and mouthpiece. Bradford, neither over elated nor daunted by his new dignities, accepted the nomination, and with few and brief intervals retained it until his own death some four-and-thirty years later, and nobly and faithfully did he perform its duties. About a week after Carver's funeral the new governor, now convalescent, received a visit from Edward Winslow, who sought him with the formal request that he as chief magistrate of the colony would perform the marriage ceremony between him and Susanna, widow of William White.