s Rolfe had said, and the free and
able-bodied of the plantations had put out, posthaste, for matrimony.
Chaplain's Choice appeared unpeopled; Piersey's Hundred slept in the
sunshine, its wharf deserted, and but few, slow-moving figures in the
tobacco fields; even the Indian villages looked scant of all but squaws
and children, for the braves were gone to see the palefaces buy their
wives. Below Paspahegh a cockleshell of a boat carrying a great white
sail overtook me, and I was hailed by young Hamor.

"The maids are come!" he cried. "Hurrah!" and stood up to wave his hat.

"Humph!" I said. "I guess thy destination by thy hose. Are they not
'those that were thy peach-colored ones'?"

"Oons! yes!" he answered, looking down with complacency upon his
tarnished finery. "Wedding garments, Captain Percy, wedding garments!"

I laughed. "Thou art a tardy bridegroom. I thought that the bachelors of
this quarter of the globe slept last night in Jamestown."

His face fell. "I know it," he said ruefully; "but my doublet had more
rents than slashes in it, and Martin Tailor kept it until cockcrow.
That fellow rolls in tobacco; he hath grown rich off our impoverished
wardrobes since the ship down yonder passed the capes. After all," he
brightened, "the bargaining takes not place until toward midday, after
solemn service and thanksgiving. There's time enough!" He waved me a
farewell, as his great sail and narrow craft carried him past me.

I looked at the sun, which truly was not very high, with a secret
disquietude; for I had had a scurvy hope that after all I should be
too late, and so the noose which I felt tightening about my neck might
unknot itself. Wind and tide were against me, and an hour later saw me
nearing the peninsula and marveling at the shipping which crowded its
waters. It was as if every sloop, barge, canoe, and dugout between Point
Comfort and Henricus were anchored off its shores, while above them
towered the masts of the Marmaduke and Furtherance, then in port, and of
the tall ship which had brought in those doves for sale. The river with
its dancing freight, the blue heavens and bright sunshine, the green
trees waving in the wind, the stir and bustle in the street and market
place thronged with gayly dressed gallants, made a fair and pleasant
scene. As I drove my boat in between the sloop of the commander of
Shirley Hundred and the canoe of the Nansemond werowance, the two
bells then newly hung in the church