ssed her,--now dwelling on the rich dress, now on the gold chain
around the slender waist, now on rounded arms, now on the white forehead
below the pearls. Well, she was a fair lady for a man to lay down his
life for.

"I held court this afternoon!" she cried. "Where were you, sir? Madam
West was here, and my Lady Temperance Yeardley, and Master Wynne,
and Master Thorpe from Henricus, and Master Rolfe with his Indian
brother,--who, I protest, needs but silk doublet and hose and a month at
Whitehall to make him a very fine gentleman."

"If courage, steadfastness, truth, and courtesy make a gentleman," I
said, "he is one already. Such an one needs not silk doublet nor court
training."

She looked at me with her bright eyes. "No," she repeated, "such an one
needs not silk doublet nor court training." Going to the fire, she stood
with one hand upon the mantelshelf, looking down into the ruddy hollows.
Presently she stooped and gathered up something from the hearth. "You
waste paper strangely, Captain Percy," she said. "Here is a whole
handful of torn pieces."

She came over to the table, and with a laugh showered the white
fragments down upon it, then fell to idly piecing them together. "What
were you writing?" she asked. "'To all whom it may concern: I, Ralph
Percy, Gentleman, of the Hundred of Weyanoke, do hereby set free from
all service to me and mine'"--

I took from her the bits of paper, and fed the fire with them. "Paper
is but paper," I said. "It is easily rent. Happily a man's will is more
durable."

CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH MY LORD AND I PLAY AT BOWLS

THE Governor had brought with him from London the year before, a set
of boxwood bowls, and had made, between his house and the fort, a noble
green. The generality must still use for the game that portion of the
street that was not tobacco-planted; but the quality flocked to the
Governor's green, and here, one holiday afternoon, a fortnight or more
from the day in which I had drunk to the King from my lord's silver
goblet, was gathered a very great company. The Governor's match
was toward,--ten men to a side, a hogshead of sweet-scented to the
victorious ten, and a keg of canary to the man whose bowl should hit the
jack.

The season had been one of unusual mildness, and the sunshine was still
warm and bright, gilding the velvet of the green, and making the red and
yellow leaves swept into the trench to glow like a ribbon of flame. The
sky was blue, the