hid with the replaced broom, to be investigated later.  Then he took his stand in the chancel, where Dr. Whitaker soon joined him, and through the open door the two clergymen watched their flock approach.  Most of them were men, cavaliers as finely dressed, if their garments were somewhat faded, as though they were to sit in Westminster Abbey; soldiers in leathern jerkins; bakers, masons, carpenters, with freshly washed face and hands, in their Sunday garments of fustian and minus workaday aprons; and the few women were in figured tabbies and damasks.

Now when the congregation had filled every seat and were lined up against the walls, a number of Indians, all relatives of Pocahontas, slipped in and stood silently with faces that seemed not alive except for the keenness of their curious eyes.  Them through the doorway came Pocahontas and old Opechisco and Nautauquas.

A sudden feeling of the wonder of this marriage overcame Alexander Whitaker.  This Indian maiden who was a creature of the woods, shy and proud as a wild animal, was to be married by him to an Englishman with centuries of civilization behind him.  What boded it for them both and for their races?

Then with love for the maiden whom he had baptized and with faith in his heart, he listened while Dr. Buck began, until he himself asked in a loud, clear voice: 

“Rebecca, wilt thou take this man to be thy wedded husband?”

After the feast was over the bride said to her husband, using his Christian name shyly for the first time: 

“John, wilt thou walk with me into the forest a little?”

And Rolfe, nothing loath to escape the noisy crowd, rose to go with her.

“Why dost thou care to come here?” he asked when they found themselves beyond the causeway in the woods flecked with the white of the innumerable dogwood trees.

“Because I feel Jamestown too small to-day, John; because I have ever sought the forest when I was happy or sad; because it seemeth to me that the trees and beasts would be hurt if I did not let them see me this great day.”

“’Tis a pretty fancy, but a pagan one, my child,” said Rolfe, frowning slightly.

But Pocahontas did not notice.  She had caught a glimpse across the leafy branches of the spotted sides of a deer, and she saw a striped chipmunk peer at her from overhead.

“Hey! little friends,” she called out gaily to them, “here’s Pocahontas come to greet ye.  Wish her happiness, that her nest may be filled with nuts.  Little Dancer, and cool shade, Bright Eyes, in hot noondays.”  Then as two wood pigeons flew by she clapped her hands gently together and cried: 

“Here’s my mate, Swift Wings, wish us happiness.”

And John Rolfe, sober Englishman that he was, felt uprise in him a new kinship with all the breathing things of the world, and he wondered whether this Indian maiden he had made his wife did not know more of the secrets of the earth than the wise men of Europe.