On the day when the intentions of marriage between the
two were published, Peter Trimble took occasion, as the
audience was dismissed, to tell Hugh that he had done a
neat thing. "I tell you," said Peter, "it was just exactly
as I should have done if I'd been in your place. Yes, sir —
if you'd sent me, as I did you, I should 'a nabbed her as
true as guns, and you might have whistled. Yes, sir, you
did that well."



CHAPTER XXIV,

HiTHKETO the office of tiie Bay Path had been one of
peace. It had been worn by weary but hopeful feet in the
service of commerce and friendship, and by the migrations
incident to a new territory ; but the hour was approaching
when new and more stirring influences should pass over its
track, fraught with great changes to the plantation which it
connected with the Bay.
While Mr. Pynchon was in attendance at the October
term of the General Court, in 1649, the book with which
the reader has Become imperfectly acquainted, through
Deacon Chapin's interview with Mr. Moxon, arrived in a
vessel from London, and the author, with, many misgivings
concerning the result, but with a determination conscien-
tiously to risk it, and bravely to abide by it, committed it
to the pubUc.
