Except the malefactors whom we have described and the diseased or infirm persons, the whole male population of the town, between sixteen years and sixty were seen in the ranks of the train-band.  A few stately savages in all the pomp and dignity of the primeval Indian stood gazing at the spectacle.  Their flint-headed arrows were but childish weapons, compared with the matchlocks of the Puritans, and would have rattled harmlessly against the steel caps and hammered iron breastplates which enclosed each soldier in an individual fortress.  The valiant John Endicott glanced with an eye of pride at his sturdy followers, and prepared to renew the martial toils of the day.

“Come, my stout hearts!” quoth he, drawing his sword.  “Let us show these poor heathen that we can handle our weapons like men of might.  Well for them if they put us not to prove it in earnest!”

The iron-breasted company straightened their line, and each man drew the heavy butt of his matchlock close to his left foot, thus awaiting the orders of the captain.  But as Endicott glanced right and left along the front he discovered a personage at some little distance with whom it behoved him to hold a parley.  It was an elderly gentleman wearing a black cloak and band and a high-crowned hat beneath which was a velvet skull-cap, the whole being the garb of a Puritan minister.  This reverend person bore a staff which seemed to have been recently cut in the forest, and his shoes were bemired, as if he had been travelling on foot through the swamps of the wilderness.  His aspect was perfectly that of a pilgrim, heightened also by an apostolic dignity.  Just as Endicott perceived him he laid aside his staff and stooped to drink at a bubbling fountain which gushed into the sunshine about a score of yards from the corner of the meeting-house.  But ere the good man drank he turned his face heavenward in thankfulness, and then, holding back his gray beard with one hand, he scooped up his simple draught in the hollow of the other.

“What ho, good Mr. Williams!” shouted Endicott.  “You are welcome back again to our town of peace.  How does our worthy Governor Winthrop?  And what news from Boston?”

“The governor hath his health, worshipful sir,” answered Roger Williams, now resuming his staff and drawing near.  “And, for the news, here is a letter which, knowing I was to travel hitherward to-day, His Excellency committed to my charge.  Belike it contains tidings of much import, for a ship arrived yesterday from England.”

Mr. Williams, the minister of Salem, and of course known to all the spectators, had now reached the spot where Endicott was standing under the banner of his company, and put the governor’s epistle into his hand.  The broad seal was impressed with Winthrop’s coat-of-arms.  Endicott hastily unclosed the letter and began to read, while, as his eye passed down the page, a wrathful change came over his manly countenance.  The blood glowed through it till it seemed to be kindling with an internal heat, nor was it unnatural to suppose that his breastplate would likewise become red hot with the angry fire of the bosom which it covered.  Arriving at the conclusion, he shook the letter fiercely in his hand, so that it rustled as loud as the flag above his head.