ime when a tall woman in black on a
black horse came up at a steady amble, her horse being old. She
dismounted near me and her horse went to nibbling the low-hanging
boughs of a locust nearby, and the moon shone full on her face, and
I saw she was the Widow Tabitha Story, with that curious patch on
her forehead. Down to the tobacco she bent and went to work stiffly
with unaccustomed hands to such work, and then again rang that cry
of "Remember Nathaniel Bacon!" And when she heard that, up she
reared herself, and raised such a shrill response of "Remember
Nathaniel Bacon!" in a high-sobbing voice, as I never heard.

And after that for a minute the field seemed to fairly howl with
that cry of following, and memory for the dead hero, always Madam
Tabitha Story's voice in the lead, shrieking over it like a cat's.

"Lord, have mercy on us," said Parson Downs at my elbow. "She will
have all England upon us, and wherefore could not the women have
kept out of this stew?"

With that he went over to the widow and strove to quiet her, but she
only shrieked with more fury, with Mistresses Longman and Allgood to
aid her, and then--came in a mad rush upon us of horse and foot,
the militia, under Capt. Robert Waller.

XVIII

I have seen the same effect when a stone was thrown into a boil of
river-rapids; an enhancement and marvellous entanglement of
swiftness and fury, and spread of broken circles, which confused the
sight at the time and the memory afterwards.

It was but a small body of horse and foot, which charged us whilst
we were cutting the tobacco on the plantation of Laurel Creek, but
it needed not a large one to put to rout a company so overbalanced
by enthusiasm, and cider, and that marvellous greed of destruction.
No more than seven gentlemen of us there were to make a stand, and
not more than some twenty-five of the rabble to be depended upon.

As for me, the principal thought in my mind when the militia burst
upon us, was the safety of Mary Cavendish. Straight to the door of
the great house I rushed, and Sir Humphrey Hyde was with me. As for
the other gentlemen, they were fighting here and there as they
could, Captain Jaynes making efforts to keep the main body of the
defenders at his back, but with little avail. I stood against the
door of the house, resolved upon but one course--that my dead
body should be the threshold over which they crossed to Mary
Cavendish. It was but a pitiful resolve, for what c