to a cat crouched before a mousehole. I thought
of the terms we now kept with these heathen; of how they came and went
familiarly amongst us, spying out our weakness, and losing the salutary
awe which that noblest captain had struck into their souls; of how many
were employed as hunters to bring down deer for lazy masters; of how,
breaking the law, and that not secretly, we gave them knives and arms, a
soldier's bread, in exchange for pelts and pearls; of how their emperor
was forever sending us smooth messages; of how their lips smiled
and their eyes frowned. That afternoon, as I rode home through the
lengthening shadows, a hunter, red-brown and naked, rose from behind a
fallen tree that sprawled across my path, and made offer to bring me my
meat from the moon of corn to the moon of stags in exchange for a gun.
There was scant love between the savages and myself,--it was answer
enough when I told him my name. I left the dark figure standing, still
as a carved stone, in the heavy shadow of the trees, and, spurring my
horse (sent me from home, the year before, by my cousin Percy), was soon
at my house,--a poor and rude one, but pleasantly set upon a slope of
green turf, and girt with maize and the broad leaves of the tobacco.
When I had had my supper, I called from their hut the two Paspahegh lads
bought by me from their tribe the Michaelmas before, and soundly flogged
them both, having in my mind a saying of my ancient captain's, namely,
"He who strikes first oft-times strikes last."

Upon the afternoon of which I now speak, in the midsummer of the year of
grace 1621, as I sat upon my doorstep, my long pipe between my teeth and
my eyes upon the pallid stream below, my thoughts were busy with these
matters,--so busy that I did not see a horse and rider emerge from the
dimness of the forest into the cleared space before my palisade, nor
knew, until his voice came up the bank, that my good friend, Master John
Rolfe, was without and would speak to me.

I went down to the gate, and, unbarring it, gave him my hand and led the
horse within the inclosure.

"Thou careful man!" he said, with a laugh, as he dismounted. "Who else,
think you, in this or any other hundred, now bars his gate when the sun
goes down?"

"It is my sunset gun," I answered briefly, fastening his horse as I
spoke.

He put his arm about my shoulder, for we were old friends, and together
we went up the green bank to the house, and, when I had brought him