The lantern was lowered suddenly. "My namesake, are you? Do you not think, sirrah, you bear too good a name to drag it into a powder-burning matter such as this?" "I do not hold it a good name," Miles burst out. "I would they had called me plain Jack." "Wherefore, pray you?" "Miles is no name at all," the boy hesitated, between shyness and the desire to vent a long-standing resentment. "It makes me think of the stone in our village that said: 'Thirteen miles to London.'" "Tut, tut, lad! Have you no Latin?" Miles slipped one hand under the edge of the table against which he leaned, and picked at a splinter he found there, while he stammered: "N—no, sir. There was no school in our village, and, had there been, my father could not spare me from the farm. I must help him, for I'm mighty strong for my years," he added gravely. "And I never want to go sit in a school, either. I am glad there will be no schools here in the plantation, not till I'm a man and can do as I will. I hold that is the best part of all in planting a colony, except the lions and the savages." "And what do you think to do with the lions and savages, Miles Rigdale?" [27] [27] "Fight 'em, sir." Captain Standish chuckled softly in his beard. "You'll fight 'em, eh? 'Tis a great pity, in truth, no one has told you what name you bear. You should know that Miles in the Latin tongue signifies 'a soldier.'" Miles forgot that his cheeks were tear-stained and his eyes swollen, and looked up happily into the speaker's face. "I am right glad of that," he announced. "'Tis a good enough name, after all." He was sorely tempted to ask the Captain if he had been named that after he proved himself a soldier in the wars, or if they named him first and he grew to it afterward, but he concluded that would be over-bold. Though, after all, he began to doubt if Captain Standish were such a terrible body. He looked pleasant enough now, as he stood in the lantern light,—a stocky, square-shouldered man of some six and thirty years, with yellow-brown hair and beard,
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