what a pass that cursed Navigation Act and the selling of the tobacco for naught, hath brought a decent woman.  How long is it since I had a new petticoat?  How long, I pray?  Oh, Lord, had the men of this colony but the spirit of the women!  Had but brave Nat Bacon lived!” With that, this woman, who had been perchance drinking too much beer for her head, though she was well used to it, burst into a storm of tears, and sprang to her feet, and cried out in a wild voice like a furious cat’s:  “Up with ye, I say!  And why do ye stop and parley?  And why do ye wait for my Lord Culpeper to sail?  I trow the women be not afraid of the governor, if the men be!  Up with ye, and this very night cut down the young tobacco-plants, and cheat the king of England, who reigns but to rob his subjects.  Who cares for the Governor of Virginia?  Who cares for the king?  Up with ye, I say!” With that she snatched a sword from a peg on the wall and swung it in a circle of flame around her head, and what with her glowing eyes and streaming black locks, and burning beauty of cheeks, and cat-like shriek of voice, she was enough to have made the governor, and even the king himself, quail, had he been there, and all the time that mild husband of hers was plucking vainly at her gown.  But the men only shouted with laughter, and presently the woman, with a savage glare at them, sank into her chair again, and Mistress Allgood went up to her, and the two whispered with handsome, fiercely wagging heads.  Then entered another woman, after a clatter of horse’s hoofs in the drive, and she had a presence that compelled all the men except one to their feet, though there was about her that foolishness which, in my mind, doth always hamper the extreme of enthusiasm.  This woman, Madam Tabitha Story, was a widow of considerable property, owning a plantation and slaves, and she had, as was well known, gone mad with zeal in the cause of Nathaniel Bacon, and had furnished him with money, and would herself have fought for him had she been allowed.  But Bacon, though no doubt with gratitude for her help, had, as I believe is the usual case with brave men, when set about with adoring women, but little liking for her.  It was, in faith, a curious sight she presented as she entered that hall of Barry Upper Branch with the men rising and bowing low, and the other women eyeing her, half with defiant glares as of respectability on the defence, and half with admiration and comradeship, for she was to the far front in this rebellion as in the other.  Madam Story was a woman so tall that she exceeded the height of many a man, and she was clad in black, and crowned with a great hat feathered with sable like a hearse, and her skin was of a whiteness more dazzling against the black than any colour.  Her face had been handsome had it not been so elongated and strained out of its proper lines of beauty, and her forehead was of a wonderful height, a smooth expanse between bunches of black curls, and in the midst was set that curious patch which she had worn ever since Bacon’s untimely death, it being, as I live, nothing more nor less than a mourning coach and four horses, cut so cunningly out of black paper that it was a marvel of skill.