se of half a mile or so; and at last approached Brandon at a
quite decorous gait.

There, we learned that we had gone to the wrong cemetery anyway--to the
one that had belonged to the old Brandon Church whose communion service
we had seen. The Harrison burying-ground was not far from the home.

So, with members of the household, we went out across the lawn and
around a corner of the garden to the family graveyard. The first
Benjamin Harrison, the emigrant, who died about 1649, is not buried
here. His tomb stands near the great sycamore tree in the churchyard at
James Towne. However, the tombs of his descendants, owners of Brandon,
are (with one exception) in this old plantation burying-ground.

[Illustration: THE ANCIENT GARRISON HOUSE.]

In the walk back to the house, we stopped to see what is probably the
oldest, and in many respects the most interesting, building on the
plantation. It is just an odd stubby brick house with a crumbling
cellar-hut at one end. But family tradition says that it is one of the
old garrison houses, or "defensible houses," built in early times for
protection against the Indians. It certainly looks the part, with its
heavy walls, its iron doors and shutters, and the indications of former
loopholes. Upon those first scattered plantations, a characteristic
feature was such a strong-house or "block-house" surrounded by a
stockade or "palisado" of logs.

While this strong-house at Brandon must have been built after the
terrible Indian massacre of 1622, yet it doubtless served as a place of
refuge in later attacks. Many a time that dread alarm may have spread
over this plantation. We thought of the hurrying to and fro; of the
gathering of weapons, ammunition, bullet-molds, food, and whatever
necessities there may have been time to catch up; and of the
panic-stricken men, women and children fleeing from field and cabin to
the shelter of the stockade and of the strong-house.

Back again in the manor-house, we spent our last hour at Brandon; for
Gadabout was to sail away next day. It was a colonial hour; for Brandon
clocks tick off no other, nor would any other seem natural within those
walls.

Sitting there in the old home, we slipped easily back into the
centuries; back perhaps to the day of the great mahogany sofa that we
sat upon. It all seemed very real. The afternoon sun--some eighteenth
century afternoon sun--came in through deep-casemented windows. It
lighted up the high, panelled roo