Mr. Johnson had gone, with Governor Winthrop and most of the other passengers, to Boston, where he intended to build a house for Lady Arbella and himself.  Boston was then covered with wild woods, and had fewer inhabitants even than Salem.  During her husband’s absence, poor Lady Arbella felt herself growing ill, and was hardly able to stir from the great chair.  Whenever John Endicott noticed her despondency, he doubtless addressed her with words of comfort.  “Cheer up, my good lady!” he would say.  “In a little time, you will love this rude life of the wilderness as I do.”  But Endicott’s heart was as bold and resolute as iron, and he could not understand why a woman’s heart should not be of iron too.

Still, however, he spoke kindly to the lady, and then hastened forth to till his corn-field and set out fruit trees, or to bargain with the Indians for furs, or perchance to oversee the building of a fort.  Also being a magistrate, he had often to punish some idler or evil-doer, by ordering him to be set in the stocks or scourged at the whipping-post.  Often, too, as was the custom of the times, he and Mr. Higginson, the minister of Salem, held long religious talks together.  Thus John Endicott was a man of multifarious business, and had no time to look back regretfully to his native land.  He felt himself fit for the new world, and for the work that he had to do, and set himself resolutely to accomplish it.

What a contrast, my dear children, between this bold, rough, active man, and the gentle Lady Arbella, who was fading away, like a pale English flower, in the shadow of the forest!  And now the great chair was often empty, because Lady Arbella grew too weak to arise from bed.

Meantime, her husband had pitched upon a spot for their new home.  He returned from Boston to Salem, travelling through the woods on foot, and leaning on his pilgrim’s staff.  His heart yearned within him; for he was eager to tell his wife of the new home which he had chosen.  But when he beheld her pale and hollow cheek, and found how her strength was wasted, he must have known that her appointed home was in a better land.  Happy for him then,—­happy both for him and her,—­if they remembered that there was a path to heaven, as well from this heathen wilderness as from the Christian land whence they had come.  And so, in one short month from her arrival, the gentle Lady Arbella faded away and died.  They dug a grave for her in the new soil, where the roots of the pine trees impeded their spades; and when her bones had rested there nearly two hundred years, and a city had sprung up around them, a church of stone was built upon the spot.

Charley, almost at the commencement of the foregoing narrative, had galloped away with a prodigious clatter, upon Grandfather’s stick, and was not yet returned.  So large a boy should have been ashamed to ride upon a stick.  But Laurence and Clara had listened attentively, and were affected by this true story of the gentle lady, who had come so far to die so soon.  Grandfather had supposed that little Alice was asleep, but, towards the close of the story, happening to look down upon her, he saw that her blue eyes were wide open, and fixed earnestly upon his face.  The tears had gathered in them, like dew upon a delicate flower; but when Grandfather ceased to speak, the sunshine of her smile broke forth again.