The planter had fallen into a reverie born of recollections of the
Patricia of his youth, long laid in her grave, but he roused himself at
the words of his guest.

"What's that?" he cried. "Annoying Patricia!" He walked to the head of
the steps and raised his cane threateningly.

"Hark ye, sirrah! The servants of Verney Manor, white or black, felon or
indented, need all their eyesight for their work. They have none to
waste in idle gazing at their betters. Begone to your mates!"

The man who, at Sir Charles's intervention, had started as from a dream,
colored deeply and compressed his lips, then glanced from one to the
other of the group above him. There was pain, humiliation, almost
supplication in the look which he directed to the girl who had brought
this rating upon him. He glanced at his master with a countenance
studiously devoid of expression, at Mistress Lettice with indifference,
at Sir Charles Carew with chill defiance. Then, with a grave inclination
of his head, he turned, and a moment later had disappeared behind the
hedge.

CHAPTER III

A COLONIAL DINNER PARTY

Three days later the master of Verney Manor gave a dinner party.

At Jamestown, twenty miles away, the Assembly had just adjourned after a
busy session. A law debarring that "turbulent people" the Quakers from
further admittance into the colony, and providing cold comfort for those
already within its doors, was passed with acclamation, as was another
against Anabaptists, and a third concerning the hue and cry for
absconding servants and slaves. The selling rates for wines and strong
waters were fixed, a proper penalty attached to the planting of tobacco
contrary to the statute, a regulation for the mending of the highways
adopted, a fine imposed for non-attendance at church, the Navigation Act
formally protested against, the trainbands strengthened, an
appropriation made for the erection of new whipping-posts and pillories,
a cruel mistress deprived of the slave she had mistreated, a harborer of
schismatics publicly reproved, and a conciliatory message and present
sent to the up-river Indians--when the Assembly adjourned with the
consciousness of having nobly done its duty. The only measure upon which
there was not unanimity of opinion was one proposing the erection of
school-houses at convenient cross-roads, and the Governor's weight being
thrown into the balance against it, it was promptly quashed.

The burgesses from the fourte