He dragged himself back to the house, where he lay down upon his bed, and watched the little patch of sunlight clamber higher up the wall and harked to the drowsy sounds of out-of-doors; then heard nothing clearly till the men tramped in to supper. He sat up slowly, and listened to catch what gossip they might bring; their voices were subdued, and he half guessed what had befallen ere he heard Master Hopkins say solemnly that the good Governor Carver was dead.
Miles thought on it the night long; this death, lonely by itself, was so much more awesome than the crowded sicknesses of the last winter. It seemed the order of life must show some change, but, with the heat of the next rising day, the colonists, as usual, only more silent, filed forth to their labor in the fields. For whether men were well or ill, or lived or died, the corn that was the hope of the settlement must be planted.
THE fields of New Plymouth at last were sown,--twenty acres of Indian corn and six of English seed, wheat, barley, and pease,--enough to yield an ample harvest. There was besides another field, where the corn, however tall it grew, would never be reaped, for, that the savages might not know the number of the dead, it was planted upon the graves of those who perished in the winter's sickness.
Among them lay John Carver, buried honorably with such poor military pomp as the colony could show its governor, and with a more precious tribute of grief for a good man lost. Near him lay now his wife Katharine, who at his death had grieved and pined, till within six weeks they had dug for her a grave in the new-sown corn-land.
Master Bradford was the new governor; a grave, wise-headed gentleman, with a gift of kindly speech and a shrewd sense of humor, but, to Miles, his greatest claim to respect was that the interpreter Squanto had chosen to dwell with him. For Miles Rigdale, to use Mistress Hopkins's vexed phrase, was "ever beating the street after the heathen savage." It must be owned that to his guardians he was a troublesome boy; not a bad boy, but a careless fellow, who, though he might mean to do well, was likely, when sent to weed in the fields, to be found swimming in the river, or hunting strawberries on the hills, or fishing with Squanto.