ught
of any creature kept in durance."

"And yet, little Sister," answered Smith gravely, while he watched her
quick change of expression, "I needs must deliver up these prisoners of
mine to another gaoler, to one who will treat them as sternly as thou
didst treat me at Werowocomoco."

Pocahontas's drawn brows indicated her endeavor to understand his
meaning.

"Wilt _thou_ be their gaoler, Matoaka?" he asked; and she, suddenly
comprehending his joke, laughed aloud.

The men were given into her custody and on her return home Powhatan was
much pleased with his daughter's embassy.

In September of that year Smith at last was made in name, what he had
long been in fact, the head of the colony. As President he could now
carry out his plans with less opposition. The building of new houses and
the church went on briskly; the training of men in military exercises,
the exploration of the shores of Chesapeake Bay--all these received his
attention. Master Hunt, the clergyman, whose library had been burned in
the fire, spent his time in encouraging the colonists, and twice each
day he held his services in the church for whose altar he melted candles
and gathered wild flowers.

In London the governors of the Colony had decided it would be a wise
thing to attach Powhatan still closer to the English settlement. Their
ideas of the position and character of an Indian potentate were very
vague indeed. They had been told that all savages were fond as children
are of bright colored dress and ornaments. So they reasoned that of
course this Indian chieftain of thirty tribes would be delighted with
the regal pomp of a coronation. They sent orders by the _Phoenix_--a
ship laden with stores which arrived that summer--that Powhatan should
be brought to Jamestown and crowned there with the crown they shipped
over for that purpose.

Smith, knowing Powhatan as none of the other colonists did, was not in
favor of this plan. It did not seem to him that a crown instead of a
feather headdress would make any difference to the werowance, whose
power among his own people needed no external decoration to strengthen
it. But he had no choice but to obey, so he and Captain Waldo and three
other gentlemen, went to Werowocomoco to bring Powhatan back with them.

On their arrival they found the werowance absent, whether by chance or
by policy. By this time Powhatan had lost some of his first awe of the
white men's wits and had concluded it was worth wh