ND BECOMES MY FOE
CHAPTER XXXIV. IN WHICH THE RACE IS NOT TO THE SWIFT
CHAPTER XXXV. IN WHICH I COME TO THE GOVERNOR'S HOUSE
CHAPTER XXXVI. IN WHICH I HEAR ILL NEWS
CHAPTER XXXVII. IN WHICH MY LORD AND I PART COMPANY
CHAPTER XXXVIII. IN WHICH I GO UPON A QUEST
CHAPTER XXXIX. IN WHICH WE LISTEN TO A SONG

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD

CHAPTER I IN WHICH I THROW AMBS-ACE

THE work of the day being over, I sat down upon my doorstep, pipe in
hand, to rest awhile in the cool of the evening. Death is not more still
than is this Virginian land in the hour when the sun has sunk away, and
it is black beneath the trees, and the stars brighten slowly and softly,
one by one. The birds that sing all day have hushed, and the horned
owls, the monster frogs, and that strange and ominous fowl (if fowl it
be, and not, as some assert, a spirit damned) which we English call the
whippoorwill, are yet silent. Later the wolf will howl and the panther
scream, but now there is no sound. The winds are laid, and the restless
leaves droop and are quiet. The low lap of the water among the reeds is
like the breathing of one who sleeps in his watch beside the dead.

I marked the light die from the broad bosom of the river, leaving it
a dead man's hue. Awhile ago, and for many evenings, it had been
crimson,--a river of blood. A week before, a great meteor had shot
through the night, blood-red and bearded, drawing a slow-fading fiery
trail across the heavens; and the moon had risen that same night
blood-red, and upon its disk there was drawn in shadow a thing most
marvelously like a scalping knife. Wherefore, the following day being
Sunday, good Mr. Stockham, our minister at Weyanoke, exhorted us to be
on our guard, and in his prayer besought that no sedition or rebellion
might raise its head amongst the Indian subjects of the Lord's anointed.
Afterward, in the churchyard, between the services, the more timorous
began to tell of divers portents which they had observed, and to recount
old tales of how the savages distressed us in the Starving Time. The
bolder spirits laughed them to scorn, but the women began to weep and
cower, and I, though I laughed too, thought of Smith, and how he ever
held the savages, and more especially that Opechancanough who was now
their emperor, in a most deep distrust; telling us that the red men
watched while we slept, that they might teach wiliness to a Jesuit, and
how to bide its time