found?"

Even Alexander rose to this. We followed our leader down past the old Junk Shop, in among the old houses at the water-front, and as we picked our way around the corner, the artist threw up his hands in despair.

"Oh, ye gods," we heard him say, "it's gone!"

We followed his tragic gaze out toward the harbor, expecting to find that an ancient landmark had been razed to the ground.

"What was it?" said Barbara anxiously. "Have they moved it somewhere else?"

"Yes," said the artist bitterly, "they've moved it somewhere else. It was the washing that was out on that line—the colors—all the accents—Portuguese as you can imagine—and they've taken it in!"

Alexander turned on his heel and left us to make our way back to Burial Hill. He sympathizes with his brother's sorrows when fishermen go down to their boats and change all the rigging the moment a marine sketch is half done; but he is not quite advanced enough to grieve because Portuguese laundry no longer flaps against the American blue.

"By the way," said the artist when we reached the Hill, "the lettering on these stones is something remarkably fine. Pemberton identifies it with Caslon lettering, Caslon the Elder, English typefounder in the sixteen hundreds. I '11 show you the article when we get home."

Barbara was examining a very old stone. "Listen," said she,—

"The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable to man's tender tie."

As we made our way along the paths beside the family lots of the Bradfords, Cottons, Harlows, LeBarons, and Howlands, we began to notice how the wording varied with the relative age of the stones. For example, "Edward Gray, Gent." is older style than "Josiah Cotton, Esq." And "That Virtuous Woman, Mrs. Rebecca Turner" is of an earlier period than "Mary, Relict of Deac. Lot Harlow."

We found one very stately epitaph to a young wife, the simplest expression of the language of bereavement: "By this event a husband was deprived of his best friend."

Far more elaborate is the tribute to Mrs. Lucy Hammatt, Relict of the late Capt. Abraham Hammatt. Still clear and definite, the inscription, deeply lettered on the face of the worn slab, records the ideals of an exemplary life:—

Composed in suffering, in joy sedate,
Good without show, for just discernment great.

But Barbara's favorite among the epitaphs was one on the stone of a young Southern bride:--

Phebe J. Bramhall
a Native of Virginia
and Wife of Benj. Bramhall
Possess'd of an Amiable Disposition

It suggests that our early ancestors were not impervious to Southern charm.

On our way down the Hill, we went around to see the harbor at sunset. Clark's Island in the distance, Captain's Hill, Manomet—we had begun to think of these as our own landmarks.

Burial Hill

"Since this is our last night at Plymouth," said Alexander that evening, "don't you want to see the country by moonlight?"

"It's only a half-moon," said Barbara critically; but we went.

On our way, we went up to look at the town from the site of the old Watch-Tower, on the very top of Burial Hill. We climbed the Hill this time by the path nearest the sea. The low branches of the twisted tree over the flight of steps made strange patterns above us against the sky. There is one place on the summit where you can look out into the darkness of the country, not toward the lights of town. Here you can see only the shadows of the elm branches and the outlines of the slanting stones. And here, I think, we found the time for the spirit of place to be abroad. We did not see the kindly ghosts of Adoniram Judson and Bathsheba Bradford and Captain Jabez Harlow. But we were in the midst of something very real. All the odd phrasings of the epitaphs—the relicts and consorts and phyticians—were hidden now, translated by the shadows. We saw only the silhouette of the past; and it was not grim or gloomy, but only brave. The record of antique sorrow is a quieting thing. Every thought on this hill was thought a long time ago. The poignancy is out of it now. And as we stand on the spot where the Pilgrims once set watch every night for danger, we cannot help being stirred by the gray dignity of their thoughts about the continuity of life.

We stayed only a moment. Then we went down again, pausing only to watch the harbor lights.

Plymouth harbor is a quiet place by moonlight, and Burial Hill is a very quiet place. Yet it gave us the most direct message we had—of spacious thought dramatized in narrow setting, of definite achievement with inadequate equipment, of the resourceful valiance of those early people, and of what Governor Bradford calls "their great patience and allacritie of spirit" in the face of life, and death.

CHAPTER II

JOHN ALDEN AND MILES STANDISH

THEIR LAND

Duxbury, Duxberie, Duxborough, Ducksborrow: the early writers spelled it as they pleased. But the Duxbury Light, Duxbury ships, and Duxbury clam-flats have standardized the spelling for all time. This town, across the harbor from Plymouth, where grants of land were settled by Myles Standish, Elder Brewster, and John Alden, has been the home port of notable ships and men. Merchant-ships, brigs, and schooners—the Eliza Warwick and the Mary Chilton, the Oriole, the Lion, Boreas, and Seadrift, the Triton, Mattakeeset, and the Hitty Tom,—these and hundreds of sail besides were built here in the shipyards and manned by Duxbury boys. Among the early men of Duxbury were Benjamin Church, who captured Philip the Sachem; Major Judah Alden and Colonel Ichabod, descendants of John Alden and Priscilla; Colonel Gamaliel Bradford and Captain Gamaliel, his son; George Partridge, one of George Washington's Congressmen; and Ezra Weston, the King Caesar of the shipyards.

At one end of the town used to be the Ezra Weston ropewalk; and not too far away was the famous Duxbury Ordinary, the tavern where, in 1678, Mr. Seabury the landlord had license to "sell liquors unto such sober-minded naighbors, as hee shall think meet, so as he sell not less than the quantie of a gallon att a time to one prson and not in smaller quantities to the occationing of drunkenes." Mr. Seabury was evidently to use his own judgment as to which "naighbors" were sufficiently sober-minded to sustain the gallon.

But doubtless the oldest Duxbury settlers were the clams. The colonists called them, first, "sandgapers," then clamps, then clambs, clambes, slammes, and clammes. We surmise that the clam was not at first the Pilgrims' favorite dish, when we read Mr. John Pory's account of his visit to Plymouth in 1622. "Muskles and slammes they have all the yeare long, which being the meanest of God's blessings here, and such as these people fat their hogs with at low water, if ours upon any extremitie did enjoy in the South Colonie, they would never complain of famine or want, although they wanted bread." When we read this remark of Mr. Pory's, we wonder how it happened that the Pilgrims were reduced at one time to five grains of parched corn per meal per person. But suppose that you yourself had never tasted a clamb at a clam-bake, and had never been introduced to it in the right circumstances by the right people—would it naturally occur to you to steam it, and discard its little neck, and make a chowder of its straps? This would call for the strictly pioneering spirit, especially if, in the words of an early explorer, these clamps were ofttimes "as big as ye penny white loafe." In fact, the only Pilgrim who at all adequately