and, laying it aside, removed a tower, a bastion, and a section of the battlement from the doomed fortress, and, loading a plate with the spoils of its treasury, planted the banner upon the top, and sent it to the captain, who received it with a bow and a smile, but never a word.

"Speak up, man!" cried Hopkins, boisterously. "Make a gallant speech in return for the courtesy of so fair a castellaine." "Mistress Bradford needs no speech to assure her of my devoir," replied the captain, simply, and the governor added: "Our captain speaks more by deeds than words, and Gideon is his most eloquent interpreter. You have not brought him to-day, Captain."

"No; Gideon sulks in these days of peace, and seldom stirs abroad."

"Long may he be idle!" exclaimed the Elder, and a gentle murmur around the board told that the women at least echoed the prayer.

But Hopkins, seated next to Mistress Bradford, and watching her distribution of the pie, cared naught for war or peace until he secured a trencher of its contents, and presently cried:

"Now, by my faith, I did not know such a pye as this could be concocted out of Yorkshire! 'Tis perfect in all its parts fowl, and game, and pork, and forcemeat, and yolks of eggs, and curious art of spicery, and melting bits of pastry within, and stout-built walls without; in fact, there is naught lacking to such a pye as my mother used to make before I had the wit to know such pyes sing not on every bush."

"You're Yorkshire, then, Master Hopkins?" asked John Howland, who with his young wife, once Elizabeth Tilley, sat opposite.

"Yes, I'm Yorkshire, root and branch, and you're Essex, and the captain and the governor Lancashire, but all shaken up in a bag now, and turned into New Englanders, and since the Yorkshire pye has come over along with us I'm content for one."

A general laugh indorsed this patriotic speech, but Myles Standish, toying with the silken banner of the now sacked and ruined fortress, said in Bradford's ear:

"All very well for a man who has naught to lose in the old country. But for my part I mean to place at least my oldest son in the seat of his fathers."

The governor smiled, and then sighed. "Nor can I quite forget the lands of Austerfield held by Bradfords and Hansons for more than one century, and the path beside the Idle, where Brewster and I walked and talked in the days of my first awakening to the real things of life"

"Real things of life, say you, Governor?" broke in Hopkins' strident voice; "well, if there is aught more real in its merit than this roasted suckling, I wish that I might meet with it."

And seizing with his napkin the hind leg of the little roasted pig presented to him by Christian Penn, the old campaigner deftly sliced it off with his sheath knife and devoured it in the most inartificial manner possible.

It was probably about this epoch that our popular saying, "Fingers were made before forks," took shape and force.

To the chowder, and the "pye," and the roasted suckling succeeded a mighty dish of succotash, that compound of dried beans, hulled corn, salted beef, pork, and chicken which may be called the charter dish of Plymouth; then came wild fowl dressed in various ways, a great bowl of "sallet," of Priscilla Alden's composition, and at last various sweet dishes, still served at the end of a meal, although soon after it was the mode to take them first.

"Oh, dear, when will the dignitaries stop eating and drinking and making compliments to each other?" murmured Priscilla Carpenter to Mary Warren at the side table where the girls and lads were grouped together, enjoying themselves as much as their elders, albeit in less ceremonious fashion.

"There! Your sister has laid down her napkin, and is gazing steadfastly at the governor, with Get up and say Grace' in her eye," replied Mary, nudging Jane Cooke to enforce silence; whereat that merry maid burst into a giggle, joined by Sarah and Elizabeth Warren, and Mary Allerton, and Betsey Ring, while Edward Bangs, and Robert Bartlett, and Sam Jenney, and Philip De la Noye, and Thomas Clarke, and John Cooke chuckled in sympathy, yet knew not what at.

A warning yet very gentle glance from Dame Bradford's eyes stifled the noise, and nearly did as much for its authors, who barely managed to preserve sobriety, while the governor returned thanks to the Giver of all good; so soon, however, as the elder party moved away, the painfully suppressed giggle burst into a storm of merriment, which as it subsided was renewed in fullest vigor by Sarah Warren's bewildered inquiry, —

"What are we all laughing at?"

"Never mind, we'll laugh first, and find the wherefore at our leisure," suggested Jane Cooke, and so the dear old foolish fun that seems to spring up in spontaneous growth where young folk are gathered together, and is sometimes scorned and sometimes coveted by their elders, went on, and, after the tables were cleared, took form in all sorts of old English games, not very intellectual, not even very refined, but as satisfactory to those who played as Buried Cities, and Twenty Questions, and Intellectual Salad, and capping Browning quotations are to the children of culture and æsthetics.

The elders, meanwhile, retiring to the smaller room at the other side of the front door, seated themselves to certain sober games of draughts, of backgammon, of loo, and beggar-myneighbor, or piquet, while Elder Brewster challenged the governor to a game of chess, which was not finished when, at ten o'clock, the company broke up, and with many a blithe good night, and assurance of the pleasure they had enjoyed, betook themselves to their own homes.

Thus, then, was Priscilla Carpenter introduced into Plymouth society.

DOROTHY IN THE GARRET.

BY J. T. TROWBRIDGE.

IN the low-raftered garret, stooping
Carefully over the creaking boards,
Old maid Dorothy goes a groping
Among its dusty and cobwebbed hoards;
Seeking some bundle of patches, hid
Far under the eaves, or bunch of sage,

Or satchel, hung on its nail amid
The heirlooms of a bygone age.

There is the ancient family chest,

There the ancestral cards and hatchel;
Dorothy, sighing, sinks down to rest,
Forgetful of patches, sage, and satchel.
Ghosts of faces peer from the gloon

Of the chimney, where, with sw fts and reel,
And the long disused, dismantled oom,
Stands the old-fashioned spinning wheel.