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THE WEDDING OF PRUDENCE
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too, that his word would not be taken against such flagrant evidence and the word of the older man. And so he went to the pillory without a word of self-defense, and, without the flicker of an eyelash, suffered the agonies of Prudence's scorn each time she passed.
It was the day before the wedding of Prudence and Peter that Eliot was released. He hardly paused to
stern winter past. His hot young hand clutched his gun ; his hot young blood gloated over the knowledge of his strength; then he neared the transparent, oiled window-panes of White's cabin and paused, peering at what he saw. Not the smug-faced, pious Peter White — the pillar of respectability— but an aged man holding and draining a flagon of rum in one shaking hand, and tittering to
AND SO HE WENT TO THE PILLORY
heed the admonitory words uttered by the magistrate, cautioning him not again to forsake the narrow path of sobriety. He thirsted, with the blind rage of youth, for Peter's gore — for the skin of the man who had done such a redman's trick — who was further to defraud him by claiming his Puritan maid. That she Avas his he knew — by the sweet plight they had pledged each other in the Maytime woods; by the look in her eyes when she answered to his lips ; by the f ear in her heart for his sake thru the
himself in a maudlin, senile way. This was to be the bridegroom of the mayflower of the Old Colony! Eliot laughed to himself softly, triumphantly. Then he withdrew noiselessly.
Prudence 's wedding-day dawned bright and clear in Plymouth town. The bride, preparing for her bridegroom, gazed, with a yearning pain, to the outline of the wood where she and Eliot had known their love's awakening. All their tender plans of