a great bag of Powder, and the backe of an Armour, at Werowocomoco amongst a many of his companions, to shew his extraordinary skill, he did dry it on the backe as he had seene the Souldiers at James Towne. But he dried it so long, they peeping over it to see his skill, it tooke fire, and blew him to death, and one or two more, and the rest so scorched, they had little pleasure to meddle any more with powder.

These and many other such pretty Accidents so amazed and affrighted both Powhatan and all his people, that from all parts with presents they desired peace: returning many stolne things which we never demanded nor thought of; and after that, those that were taken stealing, both Powhatan and his people have sent them backe to James towne, to receive their punishment; and all the Countrey became absolute as free for us as for themselves.

BETTY ALDEN AND HER COMPANIONS.1

BY JANE G. AUSTIN.

[JANE GOODWIN AUSTIN, American novelist, was born in Worcester, Mass., February 25, 1831; died in Boston, March 30, 1894. Her books are: "Fairy

Dreams" (1860), "Moonfolk" (1874), "Mrs. Beauchamp Brown" (1880),

"A Nameless Nobleman" (1881), "The Desmond Hundred" (1882), "Nantucket Scraps " (1882), "Standish of Standish" (1889), "Betty Alden" (1891), “David Alden's Daughter and Other Stories" (1892).]

HOW MISTRESS ALICE BRADFORD INTRODUCED HER SISTER PRISCILLA CARPENTER TO PLYMOUTH SOCIETY.

"GOODMAN, I've heavy news for you; so set your mind to bear it as best you may."

"Nay, goodwife, your winsome face is no herald of bad news, and certes, I'll not cross the bridge until it comes in sight."

"Well, then, since words won't daunt you, here's a fact, sir! We are to have a merrymaking, and gather all the young folk of the village, and Master Bradford will have to lay off the governor's mantle of thought and worry, that he may be jocund with the rest."

1 Copyright, 1897, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

"Nay, then, Alice, 'tis indeed heavy news!" And the governor pulled a long face, and looked mock miserable with all his might. "And is it a dispensation not to be gainsaid? Is there good cause that we should submit ourselves to an affliction that might, as it would seem, be spared?"

"Well, dear, you know that my sister Pris has come

"Do you tell me so! Now there is news in very deed! And how did Mistress Priscilla Carpenter reach these parts?" "Now, Will! if you torment me so, I'll e'en call in Priscilla Alden to take my part. She'll give you quip or crank, I'll warrant me."

"Nay, nay, wife, I'll be meek and good as your cosset lamb, so you'll keep me under your own hand. Come now, let us meet this enemy face to face. What is it all?"

Alice, who, tender soul that she was, loved not even playful and mock contention, sighed a little, and folding her hands in her lap gently said:

"It is all just as thou pleasest, Will, but my thought was to call together all the young people and make a little feast to bring those acquainted with Pris, who, poor maid, has found it a trifle dull and straitened here, after leaving her merry young friends in England."

"Ever thinking of giving pleasure to others even at cost of much toil to thyself, sweetheart!" And the governor, placing a hand under his wife's round chin, raised her face and kissed it tenderly again and again, until the soft pink flushed to the roots of the fair hair.

"Do as thou wilt, darling, in this and everything, and call upon me for what thy men and maids cannot accomplish."

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Nay, I've help enough. Christian Penn is equal to two women, and sister Pris herself is very notable. Then Priscilla Alden will kindly put her hand to some of the dainty dishes, and she is a wonder at cooking, as you know."

"Yes, she proved it in early days," interrupted Bradford, the smile fading off his face. "Had it not been for her skill in putting a savory touch to the coarsest food, I believe some of our sick folk would have died, I am sure Dame Brewster would."

"Oh, you poor souls! How you suffered, and I there in England eating and drinking of the best, and oh, Will, you should have married good dear Priscilla to reward her care of what I held so carelessly."

"Wonderful logic, madam! I should, to reward Mistress Molines for her care, have married her, when she loved another man, and I another woman, which latter was to thus be punished for carelessness in a matter she knew naught about!"

And with a tender little laugh, the governor pressed another kiss upon his wife's smooth cheek, before he went out to his fields, while she flew at once to her kitchen and set the domestic engine throbbing at double quick time. Then she stepped up the hill to John Alden's house, and found Priscilla, her morning work already done, washing and dressing her little Betty, while John and Jo watched the operation with unflagging interest.

"Come and help you, Alice? I shall be gay and glad to do it, dear, just as soon as Betty is in her cradle, and I have told Mary-à-Becket what to do about the noon meat. John, you and Jo run up the hill to the captain's, and ask Mistress Standish if Alick and Myles may come down and play with you in front of the governor's house so I may keep an eye on you."

"Two fine boys, those of Barbara's," said the governor's wife, and then affectionately, "yet no finer than your sturdy

little knaves."

"Oh, ours are well enough for little yeomen, but the captain says his Alick is heir to a great estate, and is a gentleman born!" And the two young women laughed good-naturedly, while Priscilla laid her baby in the cradle, and Alice turned toward the door saying, "Well, I must be at home to mind the maids."

“And I'll be there anon. I trust you've good store of milk and cream. We did well enow without it for four years, but now we've had it for a while, one might as well be dead as lack it."

"I've plenty, and butter beside, both Dutch and fresh," replied Alice from outside the door, and in another ten minutes the wide kitchen recently added to William Bradford's house on the corner of Leyden Street and the King's Highway, now called Main Street, hummed again with the merry sounds of youthful voices, of the whisking of eggs, and grinding of spices, and stirring of golden compounds in wooden bowls, and chopping suet, and stoning raisins, and slicing citron, and the clatter of pewter dishes, which, by the way, with wooden ware were nearly all the "pottery" the Pilgrims possessed, hypothetical teapots and china cups to the contrary; for,

since we all know that tea and coffee were never heard of in England until about the year 1666, and the former herb was sold for many years after at from ten to fifteen dollars per pound (Pepys in 1671 mentions it as a strange and barbaric beverage just introduced), it is improbable that either tea, teapot, or teacups ever reached America until after Mary Allerton, the last survivor of the "Mayflower," rested upon Burying Hill.

All that day and part of the next the battle raged in the Bradford kitchen, for delicate appetites were in those times rather a defect than a grace, and hospitality largely consisted in first providing great quantities and many varieties of food, and then overpressing the guests to partake of it. An "afternoon tea" with diaphanous bread and butter, wafer cakes, and Cambridge salts, as the only solid refreshment, would have seemed to Alice Bradford and her guests either a comic pretense or a niggardly insult; and very different was the feast to which as many as could sat down at a very early hour of the evening of the second day.

The company was large, for in the good Old Colony fashion it included both married and single persons, and would, if possible, have made no distinctions of age or position; but this catholicity had in the growth of the colony become impossible, and Mistress Bradford's invitations were, with much searching of spirit and desire to avoid offense, confined principally to young persons, married and unmarried, likely to become associates of her sister Priscilla, a fair-haired, sweet-lipped, and daintily colored lass, reproducing Dame Alice's own early charms.

"The Brewster girls must come, although I cannot yet be reconciled to Fear's having married Isaac Allerton, and calling herself mother to Bart, and Mary and Remember-great grown girls!" exclaimed the hostess in consultation with her husband, and he pleasantly replied:

"Oh, well, dame, we must not hope to guide all the world by our own wisdom; and certes, if Fear's marriage is a little incongruous, her sister Patience is well and fitly mated with Thomas Prence. It does one good to see such a comely and contented pair of wedded sweethearts."

"True enough, Will, and your thought is a rebuke to mine."

"Nay, wife, 'tis you that teach me to be charitable."

And the two, come together to reap in the glorious St.

Martin's summer of their days the harvest sown amid the chill tears of spring, looked in each other's eyes with a smile of deep content. The woman was the first to set self aside, and

Mistress All

"Come, come, Sir Governor! To business! erton, and her daughters, Mary and Remember, Bartholomew, and the Prences, Constance Hopkins with Nicholas Snow, whom she will marry, the Aldens, the captain and his wife"

"He is hardly to be ranked with the young folk, is he?" "No, dear, no more than Master Allerton, or, for that matter, the governor and his old wife; but there, there, no more waste of time, sir! Who else is to come, and who to be left at home?"

"Nay, wife, I'm out of my depth already and will e'en get back to firm land, which means I leave all to your discretion. Call Barbara and Priscilla Alden to council, and let me know in time to put on my new green doublet and hose, for I suppose I am to don them."

"Indeed you are, and your ruffles and your silk stockings that I brought over. I will not let you live altogether in hodden gray, since even the Elder goes soberly fine on holidays." Well, well, I leave it all to you, and must betake myself to the woods. Good-by for a little.'

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"Good-by, dear."

And as the governor with an ax on his shoulder strode away down Market Street and across the brook to Watson's Hill, Dame Alice, a kerchief over her head, once more ran up the hill to Priscilla Alden's.

As the great gun upon the hill boomed out the sunset hour, and Captain Standish himself carefully covered it from the dews of night, Alice Bradford stood in the great lower room of her house and looked about her. All was done that could be done to put the place in festal array, and although the fair dame sighed a little at the remembrance of her stately home in Duke's Place, London, with its tapestries and carvings and carpets and pictures, she bravely put aside the regret, and affectionately smoothed and patted the fine damask "cubboard cloth" covering the lower shelf of the sideboard, or, as she called it, the "buffet," at one side of the room, and placed and replaced the precious properties set out thereon:

A silver wine cup, a porringer that had been her mother's, nine silver teaspoons, and, crown of all, four genuine Venetian