county. His son, Tom, was just
twenty-one, and had inherited from his father the hasty temper and
invincible stubbornness which belong to all the Stewarts.

It was in the fall of 1733 that they made the trip to Williamsburg which
was to have such momentous consequences. The House of Burgesses was in
session, and Mr. Stewart, as the custom was, took his whole family with
him to the capital. I fancy I can see them as they looked that day. The
great coach, brought from London at a cost of so many thousand pounds of
tobacco, is polished until it shines again. The four horses are harnessed
to it, and Sambo, mouth stretched from ear to ear, drives it around to
the front of the mansion, where a broad flight of stone steps leads
downward from the wide veranda. The footmen and outriders spring to their
places, their liveries agleam with buckles, the planter and his lady and
their younger son enter the coach, while young Tom mounts his horse and
prepares to ride by the window. The odorous cedar chests containing my
lady's wardrobe are strapped behind or piled on top, the negroes form a
grinning avenue, the whip cracks, and they are off, half a dozen servants
following in an open cart. It is a four days' journey to Williamsburg,
over roads whose roughness tests the coach's strength to the uttermost
but it is the one event of all the year to this isolated family, and
small wonder that they look forward to it with eager anticipation.

Once arrived at Williamsburg, what craning of necks and waving of
handkerchiefs and kissing of hands to acquaintances, as the coach rolls
along the wide, white, sandy street, scorching in the sun, with the
governor's house, called by courtesy a palace, at one end, and the
College of William and Mary at the other, and perhaps two hundred
straggling wooden houses in between. The coaches and chariots which line
the street give earnest of the families already assembled from Princess
Ann to Fairfax and the Northern Neck. My lady notes that the Burkes have
at last got them a new chariot from London, and her husband looks with
appreciative eyes at the handsome team of matched grays which draw it. As
for young Tom, his eyes, I warrant, are on none of these, but on the bevy
of blooming girls who promenade the side-path, arrayed in silks and
satins and brocades, their eyes alight, their cheeks aglow with the joy
of youth and health. Small blame to him, say I, for that is just where my
own eyes would have been.