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 the motive was fear, for they had seen or heard of the tender mercies of the savages.  But in most, I think, it was a love of bold adventure, and especially the craving to push the white man’s province beyond the narrow borders of the Tidewater.  If you say that this was something more than defence, I claim that the only way to protect a country is to make sure of its environs.  What hope is there of peace if your frontier is the rim of an unknown forest?

My hardest task was to establish some method of sending news to the outland dwellers.  For this purpose I had to consort with queer folk.  Shalah, who had become my second shadow, found here and there little Indian camps, from which he chose young men as messengers.  In one place I would get a settler with a canoe, in another a woodman with a fast horse; and in a third some lad who prided himself on his legs.  The rare country taverns were a help, for most of their owners were in the secret.  The Tidewater is a flat forest region, so we could not light beacons as in a hilly land.  But by the aid of Shalah’s woodcraft I concocted a set of marks on trees and dwellings which would speak a language to any initiate traveller.  The Indians, too, had their own silent tongue, by which they could send messages over many leagues in a short space.  I never learned the trick of it, though I tried hard with Shalah as interpreter; for that you must have been suckled in a wigwam.

When I got back to James Town, Faulkner would report on his visitors, and he seems to have had many.  Rough fellows would ride up at the darkening, bringing a line from Mercer, or more often an agreed password, and he had to satisfy their wants and remember their news.  So far I had had no word from Lawrence, though Mercer reported that Ringan was still sending arms.  That tobacco-shed of mine would have made a brave explosion if some one had kindled it, and, indeed, the thing more than once was near happening through a negro’s foolishness.  I spent all my evenings, when at home, in making a map of the country.  I had got a rough chart from the Surveyor-General, and filled up such parts as I knew, and over all I