She thanked me with a smile. “It is all so strange and dreadful to me, sir,” she said. “At my home, in England, it was like a Sunday morning all the year round, — all stillness and peace; no terror, no alarm. I fear that I am not yet a good Virginian.”

When I had eaten, and had drunk the wine she gave me, I rose, and asked her if I might not see her safe within the fort before I joined her husband at the palisade. She shook her head, and told me that there were with her faithful servants, and that if the savages broke in upon the town she would have warning in time to flee, the fort being so close at hand. When I thereupon begged her leave to depart, she first curtsied to me, and then, again with tears, came to me and took my hand in hers. “I know that there is naught that I can say� .