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The last pniese had made his uncouth obeisance and departed, and busy hands were removing all signs of the late commotion in haste that the setting sun should find the village ready for its Sunday rest and peace, when Myles Standish suddenly presented himself before Priscilla Molines as she came up from the spring with a pile of wooden trenchers in her hands.
"Eleven o' the clock," said John Alden, as the Mayflower's cracked bell told six hoarse strokes. "They said they'd bring our dinner ashore for us," and he looked wistfully toward the ship. "Who said?" asked Howland; "for I've more faith in some say-sos than in some others." "Well, if I remember, 't was Mistress Molines who told me," replied Alden carefully careless.
"Mayhap my own lie. I say that Desire Minter brought me a silver cup of some sweet posset, such as you have made for our sick folk time and again, and bade me from you quaff it to your health." "And that is God's truth, say you, sir?" "Mistress Molines, my word has not often been doubted, and you force me to remind you that I come not of mechanical" "Nay, nay, stop there, an' it please you, sir!
Then swiftly, more by intuition and that strange sense which recalls a previous happening by a touch, or a smell, than by actual memory, he saw that golden morning when he had stopped by the Molines' cabin and watched the great husky balance on his shaky legs.
But Joseph Molines had not shaken off his chill by means of the captain's Hollands gin, nor did his mother or Rose Standish find themselves better in the evening than they had been in the morning, and as the darkness of the November night closed around the lonely bark, gaunt shadowy forms, Disease and Famine and Death, seemed shaping themselves among the clouds and brooding menacingly over the Forlorn Hope, as its soldiers slept or watched beneath.
"Did not William Molines send to seek speech with thee the night he died?" asked Winslow fixing his keen eyes upon the soldier's perturbed face. "Ay, but it was he and I alone." "Well, then, he had taken counsel first with a godly matron, in whose judgment he trusted." "Mistress White?" "Ay." "I would I had known it that day."
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