Yes, with the setting sun the last day of mirth had passed from Merry Mount.  The ring of gay masquers was disordered and broken; the stag lowered his antlers in dismay; the wolf grew weaker than a lamb; the bells of the morrice-dancers tinkled with tremulous affright.  The Puritans had played a characteristic part in the Maypole mummeries.  Their darksome figures were intermixed with the wild shapes of their foes, and made the scene a picture of the moment when waking thoughts start up amid the scattered fantasies of a dream.  The leader of the hostile party stood in the centre of the circle, while the rout of monsters cowered around him like evil spirits in the presence of a dread magician.  No fantastic foolery could look him in the face.  So stern was the energy of his aspect that the whole man, visage, frame and soul, seemed wrought of iron gifted with life and thought, yet all of one substance with his headpiece and breastplate.  It was the Puritan of Puritans:  it was Endicott himself.

“Stand off, priest of Baal!” said he, with a grim frown and laying no reverent hand upon the surplice.  “I know thee, Blackstone![1] Thou art the man who couldst not abide the rule even of thine own corrupted Church, and hast come hither to preach iniquity and to give example of it in thy life.  But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified this wilderness for his peculiar people.  Woe unto them that would defile it!  And first for this flower-decked abomination, the altar of thy worship!”

[Footnote 1:  Did Governor Endicott speak less positively, we should suspect a mistake here.  The Rev. Mr. Blackstone, though an eccentric, is not known to have been an immoral man.  We rather doubt his identity with the priest of Merry Mount.]

And with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the hallowed Maypole.  Nor long did it resist his arm.  It groaned with a dismal sound, it showered leaves and rosebuds upon the remorseless enthusiast, and finally, with all its green boughs and ribbons and flowers, symbolic of departed pleasures, down fell the banner-staff of Merry Mount.  As it sank, tradition says, the evening sky grew darker and the woods threw forth a more sombre shadow.

“There!” cried Endicott, looking triumphantly on his work; “there lies the only Maypole in New England.  The thought is strong within me that by its fall is shadowed forth the fate of light and idle mirthmakers amongst us and our posterity.  Amen, saith John Endicott!”

“Amen!” echoed his followers.

But the votaries of the Maypole gave one groan for their idol.  At the sound the Puritan leader glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure of broad mirth, yet at this moment strangely expressive of sorrow and dismay.

“Valiant captain,” quoth Peter Palfrey, the ancient of the band, “what order shall be taken with the prisoners?”

“I thought not to repent me of cutting down a Maypole,” replied Endicott, “yet now I could find in my heart to plant it again and give each of these bestial pagans one other dance round their idol.  It would have served rarely for a whipping-post.”