es; from open door and window all along Duke of Gloucester Street came
laughter, round oaths, now and then a scrap of drinking song. To Haward,
giddy, ill at ease, sickening of a fever, the sounds were now as a cry in
his ear, now as the noise of a distant sea. The minister of James City
parish and the minister of Ware Creek were walking before him, arm in arm,
set full sail for dinner after a stormy morning. "For lo! the wicked
prospereth!" said one, and "Fair View parish bound over to the devil
again!" plained the other. "He's firm in the saddle; he'll ride easy to
the day he drinks himself to death, thanks to this sudden complaisance of
Governor and Commissary!"

"Thanks to"--cried the other sourly, and gave the thanks where they were
due.

Haward heard the words, but even in the act of quickening his pace to lay
a heavy hand upon the speaker's shoulder a listlessness came upon him, and
he forbore. The memory of the slurring speech went from him; his thoughts
were thistledown blown hither and yon by every vagrant air. Coming to
Marot's ordinary he called for wine; then went up the stair to his room,
and sitting down at the table presently fell asleep, with his head upon
his arms.

After a while the sounds from the public room below, where men were
carousing, disturbed his slumber. He stirred, and awoke refreshed. It was
afternoon, but he felt no hunger, only thirst, which he quenched with the
wine at hand. His windows gave upon the Capitol and a green wood beyond;
the waving trees enticed, while the room was dull and the noises of the
house distasteful. He said to himself that he would walk abroad, would go
out under the beckoning trees and be rid of the town. He remembered that
the Council was to meet that afternoon. Well, it might sit without him! He
was for the woods, where dwelt the cool winds and the shadows deep and
silent.

A few yards, and he was quit of Duke of Gloucester Street; behind him,
porticoed Capitol, gaol, and tiny vineclad debtor's prison. In the gaol
yard the pirates sat upon a bench in the sunshine, and one smoked a long
pipe, and one brooded upon his irons. Gold rings were in their ears, and
their black hair fell from beneath colored handkerchiefs twisted
turbanwise around their brows. The gaoler watched them, standing in his
doorway, and his children, at play beneath a tree, built with sticks a
mimic scaffold, and hanged thereon a broken puppet. There was a shady road
leading through a woo