ason the hundred chose me its representative. In the
Assembly it was my part to urge a greater severity toward those our
natural enemies, a greater watchfulness on our part, the need for
palisades and sentinels, the danger that lay in their acquisition of
firearms, which, in defiance of the law, men gave them in exchange for
worthless Indian commodities. This Indian business was the chief matter
before the Assembly. I spoke when I thought speech was needed, and spoke
strongly; for my heart foreboded that which was to come upon us too soon
and too surely. The Governor listened gravely, nodding his head;
Master Pory, too, the Cape Merchant, and West were of my mind; but the
remainder were besotted by their own conceit, esteeming the very name of
Englishman sentinel and palisade enough, or trusting in the smooth
words and vows of brotherhood poured forth so plentifully by that red
Apollyon, Opechancanough.

When the day's work was done, and we streamed out of the church,--the
Governor and Council first, the rest of us in order,--it was to find
as often as not a red and black figure waiting for us among the graves.
Sometimes it joined itself to the Governor, sometimes to Master Pory;
sometimes the whole party, save one, went off with it to the guest
house, there to eat, drink, and make merry.

If Virginia and all that it contained, save only that jewel of which
it had robbed the court, were out of favor with the King's minion, he
showed it not. Perhaps he had accepted the inevitable with a good grace;
perhaps it was but his mode of biding his time; but he had shifted
into that soldierly frankness of speech and manner, that genial,
hail-fellow-well-met air, behind which most safely hides a villain's
mind. Two days after that morning behind the church, he had removed
himself, his French valets, and his Italian physician from the
Governor's house to the newly finished guest house. Here he lived, cock
of the walk, taking his ease in his inn, elbowing out all guests save
those of his own inviting. If, what with his open face and his open
hand, his dinners and bear-baitings and hunting parties, his tales
of the court and the wars, his half hints as to the good he might do
Virginia with the King, extending even to the lightening of the tax upon
our tobacco and the prohibition of the Spanish import, his known riches
and power, and the unknown height to which they might attain if his star
at court were indeed in the ascendant,--if