ill for any predestination not stamped with their joint seal of consent.
With that lack of astuteness proverbially exhibited by parents
disappointed in match-making designs upon their children, the vexed
father and mother began a course of vigorous repression, and thereby
riveted more firmly than ever the chains which the errant young
blacksmith and his apprentice Cupid had forged. In due time, they
perforce learned that love's flame burns the brighter fed upon a bread
and water diet; and that confinement to an attic may be quite endurable
when Cupid's messages fly in and out of its lattice at pleasure.

Finally Mary was secretly sent to an out-of-the-way neighborhood in the
vain hope that the chill of absence might hinder what home rule had only
served to help. But one day Jonas on a hunting excursion made the
acquaintance of some youth, who, among other chitchat, happened to break
into ecstatic praise of the graces of a certain fair damsel who had
recently come to live in a farm-house near their home. Of course the
anvil missed Jonas for the next day, and the next, and the next, while
he experienced the hospitalities of his new-found friends--and their
neighbors. It was time for a recognition of the inevitable by all
concerned, but when, and with what grace Mary's stubborn parents
yielded, if at all, is not recorded. But what mattered that? Old John
Prescott installed Jonas at the Nonacoicus Mill, and endowed him with
all his Groton lands, and in Lancaster, December 14, 1672, Jonas and
Mary were married. For over fifty years fortunes railed upon their
union. Four sons and eight daughters graced their fireside, and the
father was trusted and clothed with local dignities. In after time the
memory of Jonas and Mary has been honored by many worthy descendants,
and especially by the gallant services of Colonel William Prescott at
Bunker Hill, and the literary renown of William Hickling Prescott, the
historian.