e still racing across, we hoisted anchor for another visit to
Westover. When Gadabout poked her head out of the creek, she saw a
queer looking craft busy on the James. It was a government buoy-tender,
an awkward side-wheeler with a derrick forward, and big red sticks and
black ones lying on deck.

As we passed the tender, it was moving the red buoy at the mouth of our
creek farther out into the river. Evidently the shoals were encroaching
upon the channel. Gadabout showed little interest in the strange boat
and its doings; and, unconcernedly turning her back, headed up the
river. Of course buoys were all very well and she found them quite a
help in getting about; but all this fussy shifting of them by a few
feet mattered little to her, for she was on the wrong side of them most
of the time anyway.

However, we thought of how differently the watchful buoy-tender would
be regarded by the heavy laden freighters that would pass that way,
their rusty hulls plowing deep. To them how important that each buoy,
each inanimate flagman of the river route, should stand true where
danger lies and truly point the fairway.

Reaching the little cove below the steamboat pier, Gadabout ran close
in and cast anchor. She may well have been proud of the quite
perceptible waves that she sent rolling to the shore and of the quite
audible swish that they made on the beach.

That morning we saw the landward front of Westover, and straightway
forgot all about the more pretentious river front. You step from the
house down into an old-time courtyard. At first you do not see much of
the courtyard itself, for you have heard of its noted entrance gates,
perhaps the first example of ornamental iron-work in the colonies, and
they stand quite conspicuously in front of you. These gates were
imported from England by Colonel William Byrd, whose initials, W.E.B.,
appear inwrought in monogram.

Two great birds standing on stone balls top the gate-posts. With a fine
disregard of both ornithology and heraldry these birds have often been
spoken of as martlets--the martlet appearing in the Byrd coat of arms.
They are evidently eagles, and pretty well developed specimens.
American eagles, we might call them, if they had not lighted upon these
gate-posts before the American nation adopted its emblem--indeed before
the American nation was born. When, in the days of the Civil War, the
Federal troops came along, the soldiers seem to have stood strictly
upon chr