d English
corporations are going to let you inside? Not them. The most you'll get
will be the scraps that fall from their table, my poor Lazarus, and for
these you'll have to go hat in hand to Dives."

His face grew suddenly earnest, and he leaned on the table and looked
me straight in the eyes.

"You're a young lad and a new-comer, and the accursed scales of
Virginia are not yet on your eyes. Forbye, I think you've spirit,
though it's maybe mixed with a deal of folly. You've your choice before
you, Mr. Garvald. You can become a lickspittle like the rest of them,
and no doubt you'll gather a wheen bawbees, but it will be a poor
shivering soul will meet its Maker in the hinder end. Or you can play
the man and be a good Virginian. I'll not say it's an easy part. You'll
find plenty to cry you down, and there will be hard knocks going; but
by your face I judge you're not afraid of that. Let me tell you this
land is on the edge of hell, and there's sore need for stout men.
They'll declare in this town that there's no Indians on this side the
mountains that would dare to lift a tomahawk. Little they ken!"

In his eagerness he had gripped my arm, and his dark, lean face was
thrust close to mine.

"I was with Bacon in '76, in the fray with the Susquehannocks. I speak
the Indian tongues, and there's few alive that ken the tribes like me.
The folk here live snug in the Tidewater, which is maybe a hundred
miles wide from the sea, but of the West they ken nothing. There might
be an army thousands strong concealed a day's journey from the manors,
and never a word would be heard of it."

"But they tell me the Indians are changed nowadays," I put in. "They
say they've settled down to peaceful ways like any Christian."

"Put your head into a catamount's mouth, if you please," he said
grimly, "but never trust an Indian. The only good kind is the dead
kind. I tell you we're living on the edge of hell. It may come this
year or next year or five years hence, but come it will. I hear we are
fighting the French, and that means that the tribes of the Canadas will
be on the move. Little you know the speed of a war-party. They would
cut my throat one morning, and be hammering at the doors of James Town
before sundown. There should be a line of forts in the West from the
Roanoke to the Potomac, and every man within fifty miles should keep a
gun loaded and a horse saddled. But, think you the Council will move?
It costs money, say the wisea