The famished thirsty ones, who for an hundred days had not tasted any but stored water, crowded around the casks and drank their first New England water with as much delight as ever they drank drink in their lives. Then Elder Brewster pointed to a large basket of corn or maize, some red, some yellow, and some marked with blue, a goodly sight. “This, my friends, is a gift of Providence, without which I do not know what we would do. We will not eat it but will guard it as precious seed with which to make the plantation.” They could not admire it enough, never having seen anything like it except in the museum at Leyden. Scant as their food had been and still bid fair to be for a space, they all agreed that this seed was a gift of God and must be guarded as such. Elder Brewster went on: “To-day no man has rested. Some have felled timber, some have sawed, some rived and some carried, but all have worked without ceasing to lay the foundations of our first homes in this wilderness. We receive them reverently, these free homes, and promise to guard their hallowed walls within which our children may first learn to love their country and their God. “And the great gift, my friends, the gift that is more than wealth, is the freedom to worship God after our own wills, to plant the first colony for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith. God not only sifted three kingdoms to get the seed for this enterprise, but sifted that seed over again. Every person whom He would not have go at this time to plant the first colony of England, He sent back, even from mid-ocean, in the Speedwell. “It is given us to establish the principles of self-government and freedom of worship and to deepen and expand the faith. And now, friends, thanks to our hunters, we have a feast prepared of roast goose and fowls, which will make a pleasant change from the dried neat’s tongue and Holland cheese and biscuits of the ship’s diet. We had like to have some deer,”--and here he smiled knowingly. “The men saw some and shot at them but missed them. Thomas Bradford said that one buck over the shoulder was worth three in the bush.” There was a shout of laughter at the discomfited hunters and then they bowed their heads to say grace and then fell to with many expressions of good-will. It was sweet and comfortable to see such lively and true expressions of dear and unfeigned love. While they were feasting, Mary Chilton slipped away. Down in a lowly bed lay a mother and a young babe, even as that other mother of old; low and mean and poor the surroundings, but holding the hope, almost divine, of a people. Mary bent over the brooding mother and in her face was an adoration not of earth but of heaven. “Susanna, are you asleep?” she said softly. “No,” said the mother; “I but lie here, wondering what this new land has to give my babe. I am heart-sick with fear.”