replied that Faulkner was
as staunch as cold steel, and that he had picked the others.

"Well, let's see your accommodation," and the old fellow hopped to his
feet, and was out of doors before I could get the lantern.

Mercer on a matter of this sort was a different being from the decayed
landlord of the water-side tavern. His spectacled eyes peered
everywhere, and his shrewd sense judged instantly of a thing's value.
He approved of the tobacco-shed as a store for arms, for he could reach
it from the river by a little-used road through the woods. It was easy
so to arrange, the contents that a passing visitor could guess nothing,
and no one ever penetrated to its recesses but Faulkner and myself. I
summoned Faulkner to the conference, and told him his duties, which, he
undertook with sober interest. He was a dry stick from Fife, who spoke
seldom and wrought mightily.

Faulkner attended to Mercer's consignments, and I took once more to the
road. I had to arrange that arms from the coast or the river-sides
could be sent inland, and for this purpose I had a regiment of pack
horses that delivered my own stores as well. I had to visit all the men
on the list whom I did not know, and a weary job it was. I repeated
again my toil of the first year, and in the hot Virginian summer rode
the length and breadth of the land. My own business prospered hugely,
and I bought on credit such a stock of tobacco as made me write my
uncle for a fourth ship at the harvest sailing. It seemed a strange
thing, I remember, to be bargaining for stuff which might never be
delivered, for by the autumn the dominion might be at death grips.

In those weeks I discovered what kind of force Lawrence leaned on. He
who only knew James Town and the rich planters knew little of the true
Virginia. There were old men who had long memories of Indian fights,
and men in their prime who had risen with Bacon, and young men who had
their eyes turned to the unknown West. There were new-comers from
Scotland and North Ireland, and a stout band of French Protestants,
most of them gently born, who had sought freedom for their faith beyond
the sway of King Louis. You cannot picture a hardier or more spirited
race than the fellows I thus recruited. The forest settler who swung an
axe all day for his livelihood could have felled the ordinary fine
gentleman with one blow of his fist. And they could shoot too, with
their rusty matchlocks or clumsy snaphances. In some few th