"To think how John Alden turned white as any maid when the good news came!" sobbed Priscilla running in to fling her arms around Dame Brewster, who sat with folded hands and rapt face praying to the God of battles. "Oh mother, mother, they all are safe, and 't is an English ship. Belike, Fear and Patience and their brother are aboard." "Nay, dear maid, nay, be not so carried away. If indeed God sendeth my children"-- But the mere thought of such joy was too much for the self-control the poor mother so struggled for, and when the elder hastened into the house he found his wife weeping for joy upon Priscilla's heaving breast. "Nay then, wife, nay then, doest thou well?--and yet mine own eyes might but too easily rain with gratitude. Dame, wife I say, nay then--let us pray that in all things His will be done." And in less than an hour Mary Brewster was sobbing afresh in the stalwart embrace of her eldest son Jonathan, a young fellow of five-and-thirty, who full of health and courage was come to be the staff of her old age, and to bring news of the fair sisters who would come anon. For this was the Fortune, a little ship of fifty-five tons, dispatched by the Adventurers in London to carry over some of the colonists disappointed of a passage in the Mayflower, but principally to convey Robert Cushman, who came pledged to obtain the consent of the Pilgrims to a contract more favorable to their English friends than that they were disposed to undertake. With him came his son Thomas, a boy of fourteen, whom his father upon his hasty return in the Fortune left behind under charge of the governor, to whom he subsequently wrote, "I pray you care for my son as for your own;" and so well did Bradford train the boy soon orphaned and left entirely to his charge, that Thomas Cushman became successor of William Brewster as Ruling Elder of the Pilgrim Church, and now lies on Burying Hill beneath a goodly monument erected by his numerous descendants. But little on that bleak November day recked the boy of future honors or proud posterities, for he and his friend Thomas Prence, future governor of the colony, but then a merry youth of nineteen, were hand and glove with a gay company of lads and young men who had accepted the adventure of Pilgrimage as they would have sailed with Drake, or Hawkins, or Captain Cooke,--any leader who promised novelty, excitement, and the chance of hard knocks and treasure.