"A love philtre! _Vade retrograde Sathanas!_" exclaimed the elder half rising from his chair, but here the doctor eagerly interposed,-- "What like was the herb, girl? Hast any of it in store for a second dose?" "Mayhap--a little," muttered Desire twisting and turning, but seeing no means of escape. "Go and fetch it," commanded the elder. "And Priscilla do thou go too and see that the wretched creature doth not make way with it." "And sith John Howland is after a sort betrothed to the poor bemused child, I think it well to summon him, that he may advise with us as to the sequela of this folly. I will call him to the Council." And Bradford followed the two girls from the room. "If she hath murdered the captain, she shall die the death," exclaimed the elder striding about the room, and pausing before the great chair where his pale and fragile wife sat looking up at him with beseeching eyes. "Nay, William, she is hardly older than our own dear girls, and it would ill become us who still carry our own lives in our hands to deprive a poor silly maid of hers." "So the best road out of the maze is to cure the captain," remarked Doctor Fuller dryly. "After that we'll marry the girl to John Howland, and trust him to keep her quiet. Here they come." And in at the open door came the governor and Howland, Desire and Priscilla, who carried in her hand a little box full of half-dried leaves, which she presented to the doctor, who solemnly pulling from his pocket a pair of clumsy iron-bowed spectacles put them astride his nose, and taking the herbs to the window carefully examined them, while all the rest stood anxiously around staring with all their might. "Hm! Hah! Yes, well yes, I see, I see!" murmured the botanist, and then turning to Bradford he fixed him with a meditative gaze over the tops of his barnacles and said,-- "You know something of botany, Governor. Say you not that this is the _Platanthera Satyrion_, the herb supposed to give vigor to the hearts of those wild men whom the mythologists celebrate?" "Is it? I should have taken it for the iris whose flower I have noted in these swamps." "'T is akin, ay, distant kin, but with the difference that maketh one harmless, and 't other deadly. I will take it to Sister Winslow's house and examine it with my books, but still I can aver at once that 't is Platanthera; and if it is also Satyrion I will promise that it shall prove only nauseous and distasteful to our good Captain, and by no means deadly. I will go to see him." "And John Howland," said the Governor turning toward the young man who stood looking with aversion at the figure of Desire, who with her head in her apron wept loud and angrily, "it seemeth to me that since this maid is betrothed to you, and is manifestly unfit to guide herself, that it is best for you to marry her here, and now, and after that train her into more discretion than she naturally showeth."