Leaving the house, and drawing one or two eager breaths of fresh air, Standish climbed the hill where already the fortification he had proposed was nearly complete, though not yet armed. Stepping upon a great beam, squared but not laid in place, he stood looking around him as if to see what Nature and his own work could offer to fill the great gulf opening in the future. A light fog still clung to the face of the water and hung in the hollows of the hills; shrouded in its folds the Mayflower lay like a spectre ship, ugly, unsafe, full of discomfort and misery, but yet the only link between this handful of dying men and their home. Standish gazed at her with a gathering darkness upon his face, until the burden of his thought broke out in a savage murmur,-- "_Couldst_ not make thy way through yonder shoals and bring us to the fair shores I told her of! If it be thy fault, Thomas Jones!"-- The slow clenching of a jaw square and strong as a mastiff's finished the sentence, and Standish's eyes came back to the rude hut where all he loved lay dying, perhaps through this man's fault. At his feet lay the sketch as it were of the town he and his comrades had laid down in outline, and intended to build up as time and strength allowed. Already Leyden Street, or The Street, as it was at first called, lay a distinct thoroughfare from the Rock to the Fort, the eastern and western extremities of the village. Along this street were staked out plots of land, some larger and some smaller in the proportion of eight feet frontage to each person in a family, the single men, and those women and children already left desolate, being divided among the householders, and the whole company reduced to nineteen families. Standish's own house, not yet finished, lay nearest to the Fort, which with its armament were to be his especial charge, and several of the single men had been appointed to his family. Their own illness, and that of Mistress Standish had, however, interfered with this arrangement, and only John Alden shared the house as yet with Standish, the two men sometimes eating at the Common house, the only one except the hospital really finished, and sometimes cooking for themselves such food as they could lay hands upon, for the house, unlike some of the others, already boasted a chimney laid up of sticks and clay, and showed a generous fireplace in the larger or living room which, with two little sleeping-rooms and a loft, comprised the whole accommodation. Upon this little home so hopefully begun, so neglected during the last ten days, Myles gazed long and wistfully, smiling sadly as he saw Alden come out and look up and down the street for him, finally going to seek him in the Common house, a substantial structure some twenty feet square, built of hewn oaken logs, fitted together as closely as possible, and the crevices stopped with clay, which freely washed out in stormy weather.