g beautiful, the seats
were filled very early in the morning. The governor with his wife and
daughters was present, and so were many other notables. Robert,
Tayoga and Grosvenor were in a group of nearly fifty young
Virginians. All about were women and girls in their best spring
dresses, many imported from London, and there were several men whom
Robert knew by their garb to be clergymen. Colored women, their heads
wrapped in great bandanna handkerchiefs, were selling fruits or
refreshing liquids.

The whole was exhilarating to the last degree, and all the youth and
imagination in Robert responded. Dangers befell him, but delights
offered themselves also, and he took both as they came. Several
preliminary races, improvised the day before, were run, and they
served to keep the crowd amused, while they waited for the great
match.

Robert and Tayoga then moved to advanced seats near the Governor,
where Willet was already placed, in order that they might fulfill
their honorable functions as judges, and the people began to stir with
a great breath of expectation. They were packed in a close group for a
long distance, and Robert's eye roved over them, noting that their
faces, ruddy or brown, were those of an open air race, like the
English. Almost unconsciously his mind traveled back to a night in
New York, when he had seen another crowd gather in a theater, and then
with a thrill he recalled the face that he had beheld there. He could
never account for it, although some connection of circumstances was
back of it, but he had a sudden instinctive belief that in this new
crowd he would see the same face once more.

It obsessed him like a superstition, and, for the moment, he forgot
the horses, the race, and all that had brought him there. His eye
roved on, and then, down, near the front of the seats he found him,
shaved cleanly and dressed neatly, like a gentleman, but like one in
poor circumstances. Robert saw at first only the side of his face, the
massive jaw, the strong, curving chin, and the fair hair crisping
slightly at the temples, but he would have known him anywhere and in
any company.

St. Luc sat very still, apparently absorbed in the great race which
would soon be run. In an ordinary time any stranger in Williamsburg
would have been noticed, but this was far from being an ordinary time.
The little town overflowed with British troops, and American visitors
known and unknown. Tayoga or Willet, if they saw him, m