e need be no
trouble."

"That is precisely the point," said he. "I do not choose that your way
should take you again to the side of Miss Elspeth Blair. If it does, we
shall quarrel."

It was the height of flattery. At last I had found a fine gentleman who
did me the honour to regard me with jealous eyes. I laughed loudly with
delight.

He turned and strolled back to the company. Still laughing, I passed
from the house, lit my lantern, and plunged into the sombre woods.

CHAPTER XI.

GRAVITY OUT OF BED.

A week later I had a visit from old Mercer. He came to my house in the
evening just after the closing of the store. First of all, he paid out
to me the gold I had lost from my ship at Accomac, with all the gravity
in the world, as if it had been an ordinary merchant's bargain. Then he
produced some papers, and putting on big horn spectacles, proceeded to
instruct me in them. They were lists, fuller than those I had already
got, of men up and down the country whom Lawrence trusted. Some I had
met, many I knew of, but two or three gave me a start. There was a
planter in Henricus who had treated me like dirt, and some names from
Essex county that I did not expect. Especially there were several in
James Town itself--one a lawyer body I had thought the obedient serf of
the London merchants, one the schoolmaster, and another a drunken
skipper of a river boat. But what struck me most was the name of
Colonel Beverley.

"Are you sure of all these?" I asked.

"Sure as death," he said. "I'm not saying that they're all friends of
yours, Mr. Garvald. Ye've trampled on a good wheen toes since you came
to these parts. But they're all men to ride the ford with, if that
should come which we ken of."

Some of the men on the list were poor settlers, and it was our business
to equip them with horse and gun. That was to be my special duty--that
and the establishing of means by which they could be summoned quickly.
With the first Mercer could help me, for he had his hand on all the
lines of the smuggling business, and there were a dozen ports on the
coast where he could land arms. Horses were an easy matter, requiring
only the doling out of money. But the summoning business was to be my
particular care. I could go about the country in my ordinary way of
trade without exciting suspicion, and my house was to be the rendezvous
of every man on the list who wanted news or guidance.

"Can ye trust your men?" Mercer asked, and I