ned their cards. At another table was primero, or
thirty-one, a game very much resembling the more modern game of
vingt-et-un; and here, too, loud oaths of "damn the luck," escaped the
lips of the betters, as, with twenty-two in their hands, they drew a
ten, and burst with a pip too many. Others were moderate in their risks,
rattled the dice at tra-trap, and playing for only an angel a game,
smoked their pipes sociably together, and talked of the various measures
before the Assembly.

Thus the first hours of the evening passed rapidly away, when suddenly
the sound of the rebecks[27] ceased in the ball-room, the gaming was
arrested in an instant, and at the loud cry of hall-a-hall,[28] the
whole company repaired to the long, broad porch, crowding and pushing
each other, the unwary cavaliers treading on the long trains of the fair
ladies, and receiving a well-merited frown for their carelessness. The
object of this general rush was to see the masque, which was to be
represented in the porch, illuminated and prepared for the purpose. At
one end of the porch a stage was erected, with all the simple machinery
which the ingenuity of the youth of Jamestown could devise, to aid in
the representation--the whole concealed for the present from the view of
the spectators by a green baize curtain.

The object of the masque, imitated from the celebrated court masques of
the seventeenth century, which reflected so much honour on rare Ben
Jonson, and aided in establishing the early fame of John Milton, was to
celebrate under a simple allegory the glories of the Restoration. Alfred
Bernard, who had witnessed such a representation in England, first
suggested the idea of thus honouring the birth-night of the Lady
Frances, and the suggestion was eagerly taken hold of by the loyal young
men of the little colonial capital, who rejoiced in any exhibition that
might even faintly resemble the revels to which their loyal ancestors,
before the revolution, were so ardently devoted.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] This is his own language.

[26] Pip signified the spot on a card.

[27] Fiddles.

[28] The cry of the herald for silence at the beginning of the masque.

CHAPTER XV.

"Then help with your call
For a hall, a hall!
Stand up by the wall,
Both good-men and tall,
We are one man's all!"
_The Gipsey Metamorphosea._

With the hope that a description of the sports and pastimes of their
ancestors may meet w