as the querulous maundering of a sick woman; but when the other persisted, and spoke of treasonable letters that her husband had writ, and read out to Oldhame in her very presence, Dame Bradford began to pay some heed, and ask questions, until by the time the woman's strength was overborne and she could say no more, the skeleton of a plot lay bare, which should it be clothed upon with sinew, and flesh, and armor, and weapons, might slay us all both as a colony and as particular men."
"A dragon, Priscilla called it," interposed the captain.
"Priscilla! Did Mistress Lyford say as much to her as to my wife?" asked the governor, a little piqued.
"Nay, I know not, for I was, according to my wont, too outspoken to listen as I should."
"Well, but explain, I beg of you."
"All is, that Priscilla began some sort of warning anent this very matter, and I angered her with some jibe at women meddling in matters too mighty for them, so that I know not what she might have had to tell."
The Governor of Plymouth smiled in a subtle fashion peculiar to men whose vision extends beyond their own time. "Women," said he slowly, as he pressed the tobacco into his pipe,—"women, Myles, are like the bit of lighted tinder I will lay upon this inert mass of dried weed. The tinder is so trivial, so slight a thing, so difficult to handle, so easily destroyed, and yet, brother man, how without it should we derive the solace and counsel of our pipes?"
Glancing at each other, the soldier and the statesman laughed somewhat shamefacedly, and Myles said,—
"Ay, 't is the pith of Æsop's fable of the Lion and the Mouse."
