and held only servants or Indians or very old men. It was as 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!