bettered any day by taking a gun and hunting their own woods.  When my own business was over, I would look on at some of the other ladings.  There on the wharf would be the planter with his wife and family, and every servant about the place.  And there was the merchant skipper, showing off his goods, and quoting for each a weight of tobacco.  The planter wanted to get rid of his crop, and knew that this was his only chance, while the merchant could very well sell his leavings elsewhere.  So the dice were cogged from the start, and I have seen a plain kitchen chair sold for fifty pounds of sweet-scented, or something like the price at which a joiner in Glasgow would make a score and leave himself a handsome profit.

* * * * *

The upshot was that I paid a visit to the Governor, Mr. Francis Nicholson, whom my lord Howard had left as his deputy.  Governor Nicholson had come from New York not many months before with a great repute for ill-temper and harsh dealing; but I liked the look of his hard-set face and soldierly bearing, and I never mind choler in a man if he have also honesty and good sense.  So I waited upon him at his house close by Middle Plantation, on the road between James Town and York River.

I had a very dusty reception.  His Excellency sat in his long parlour among a mass of books and papers and saddle-bags, and glared at me from beneath lowering brows.  The man was sore harassed by the King’s Government on one side and the Virginian Council on the other, and he treated every stranger as a foe.

“What do you seek from me?” he shouted.  “If it is some merchants’ squabble, you can save your breath, for I am sick of the Shylocks.”

I said, very politely, that I was a stranger not half a year arrived in the country, but that I had been using my eyes, and wished to submit my views to his consideration.

“Go to the Council,” he rasped; “go to that silken fool, His Majesty’s Attorney.  My politics are not those of the leather-jaws that prate in this land.”

“That is why I came to you,” I said.

Then without more ado I gave him my notions on the defence of the colony, for from what I had learned I judged that would interest him most.  He heard me with unexpected patience.

“Well, now, supposing you are right?  I don’t deny it.  Virginia is a treasure house with two of the sides open to wind and weather.  I told the Council that, and they would not believe me.  Here are we at war with France, and Frontenac is hammering at the gates of New York.  If that falls, it will soon be the turn of Maryland and next of Virginia.  England’s possessions in the West are indivisible, and what threatens one endangers all.  But think you our Virginians can see it?  When I presented my scheme for setting forts along the northern line, I could not screw a guinea out of the miscreants.  The colony was poor, they cried, and could not afford it, and then the worshipful councillors rode home to swill Madeira and loll on their London beds.  God’s truth! were I not a patriot, I would welcome M. Frontenac to teach them decency.”