were said and many grinning
faces thrust in mine, and thinking of it now, I would that I had
them all in open battlefield, for how can a man fight ridicule?
Verily it is like duelling with a man of feathers. Quite still I
sat, but felt that dignity and severity of bearing but made me more
vulnerable to ridicule. Utterly weaponless I was against such odds.

I was glad enough when the drums challenged again for a race of
boys, who were to run one hundred and twelve yards for a hat.
Everybody turned from me to see that, and I watched wearily the
straining backs and elbows of the little fellows, and the shouts of
encouragement and of triumph when the winner came in smote my ears
as through water, with curious shocks of sound.

Then ten fiddlers played for a prize, and while they played, the
people gathered around me again, for races more than music have the
ability to divert the minds of English folk; but they left me again,
when there was a wrestling for a pair of silver knee-buckles. I
remember to this day with a curious dizziness of recollection, the
straining of those two stout wrestlers over the field, each forcing
the other with all his might, and each scarce yielding a foot, and
finally ending the strife in the same spot as where begun. I can see
now those knotted arms and writhing necks of strength, and hear
those quick pants of breath, and again it seems as then, a picture
passing before my awful reality of shame. Then two young men danced
for a pair of shoes, and the crowd gathered around them, and I was
quite deserted, and could scarcely see for the throng the rhythmic
flings of heels and tosses of heads. But when that sport was over,
and the winner dancing merrily away in his new shoes, the crowd
gathered about me again, and in spite of my brother, clods of mud
began to fly, and urchins to tweak at my two extended feet.

Then that happened, which verily never happened before nor since in
Virginia, and can never happen again, because a maid like Mary
Cavendish can never live again.

Slow pacing into the New Field in that same blue and silver gown
which she had worn to the governor's ball, with a wonderful plumed
hat on her head, and no mask, and her golden hair flowing free,
behind her Catherine and Cicely Hyde, like two bridesmaids, came my
love, Mary Cavendish.

And while I shrank back, thinking that here was the worst sting of
all, like the sting of death, that she should see me thus, straight
up to th