Chapter I: Preface

This story is like those we hear of our neighbours to-day: it is a mixture of fact and fancy.

The aim in telling it has been to present Plymouth Colony as it was in its first three years of existence; to keep to possibilities, even while inventing incidents.

Actual events have been transferred from a later to an earlier year when they could be made useful, to bring them within the story's compass, and to develop it.

For instance, John Billington was lost for five days and died early, but not as early as in the story. Stephen Hopkins was fined for allowing his servants to play shovelboard, but this did not happen till some time later than 1622. Stephen Hopkins was twice married; records show that there was dissension; that the second wife tried to get an inheritance for her own children, to the injury of the son and daughter of the first wife. Facts of this sort are used, enlarged upon, construed to cause, or altered to suit, certain results.

But there is fidelity to the general trend of events, above all to the spirit of Plymouth in its beginnings. As far as may be, the people who have been transferred into the story act in accordance with what is known of the actual bearers of these names.

There was a Maid of Plymouth, Constance Hopkins, who came in the _Mayflower_, with her father Stephen; her stepmother, Eliza; her brother, Giles, and her little half-sister and brother, Damaris and Oceanus, and to whom the _Anne_, in 1623, brought her husband, Honourable Nicholas Snowe, afterward one of the founders of Eastham, Massachusetts.

Undoubtedly the real Constance Hopkins was sweeter than the story can make her, as a living girl must be sweeter than one created of paper and ink. Yet it is hoped that this Plymouth Maid, Constance, of the story, may also find friends.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. With England's Shores Left Far Astern 3

II. To Buffet Waves and Ride on Storms 15

III. Weary Waiting at the Gates 31

IV. The First Yuletide 45

V. The New Year in the New Land 61

VI. Stout Hearts and Sad Ones 76

VII. The Persuasive Power of Justice and Violence 90

VIII. Deep Love, Deep Wound 104

IX. Seedtime of the First Spring 119

X. Treaties 133

XI. A Home Begun and a Home Undone 150

XII. The Lost Lads 166

XIII. Sundry Herbs and Simples 183

XIV. Light-Minded Man, Heavy-Hearted Master 199

XV. The "Fortune" That Sailed, First West, then East 216

XVI. A Gallant Lad Withal 234

XVII. The Well-Conned Lesson 251

XVIII. Christmas Wins, Though Outlawed 267

XIX. A Fault Confessed, Thereby Redressed 284

XX. The Third Summer's Garnered Yield 302

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"Constance opened the door, stepping back to let the bride precede her" _Frontispiece_ (_See page 157_)

FACING PAGE

"'Constantia; confess, confess--and do not try to shield thy wicked brother'" 52

"'Look there,' said John Alden" 116

"'You look splendid, my Knight of the Wilderness'" 244

A PILGRIM MAID

A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620

_A PILGRIM MAID_