fter having married "thirdly" or
"fifthly"--yes, even "sixthly"--makes top-heavy family trees and
puzzling lines of descent.

In this instance, we were quite content to skip to the opening of the
nineteenth century when Fleur de Hundred became the property of John V.
Willcox, in whose descendants it has ever since remained.

Landing upon a pebbly beach beside the ruins of a pier, we took a long
walk inland to the present-day home. While historic Fleur de Hundred is
now allowed to lie idle, its plantation life all gone, yet its home
life continues and the old-time hospitality remains, as we found in
that afternoon visit. And when we set our faces toward Gadabout again,
Nautica had roses and lavender and violets from an old garden that
refused to stop blooming with the rest of the plantation, and the
Commodore treasured a rare pamphlet upon early Virginia that only
Virginia courtesy would have entrusted to a stranger.

Through the quiet of the sleeping plantation, we took our way toward
the river. Some bees had found late sweetness along the overgrown
roadway. The air was still and sweet with the scent of sun-drying
herbs. A lagging sail was on old Powhatan. About us on every hand lay
the historic soil of Fleur de Hundred. We wondered where the
manor-house had stood in those early colonial days when Sir George
Yeardley, the governor, made his home here, with many indented servants
and half the negroes in the colony to serve him; and where had been the
several dwellings and store-houses, stoutly palisaded, that had formed
quite a village for his day.

[Illustration: PRESENT-DAY FLEUR DE HUNDRED.]

It is not recorded that the Governor was a great smoker, but he was an
enthusiastic grower of tobacco and may almost be said to have been the
father of the industry. Doubtless, in his time, most of these fertile
acres were covered with the strange weed that the Englishmen had got
from the village gardens of the red man.

But here were grown maize and wheat also; and to grind these Sir George
built--over there on the point of the plantation--the first windmill in
America.

In the eyes of the savages, he must have waxed to the stature of a
great medicine man, when he made of wood the long arms that beckoned to
the winds and made them come to grind his grain. Through all time, had
not their fathers (or rather their mothers) had to steep grain for
twelve hours; then laboriously pound it in stone mortars; and then sift
it thr