The namesake of a prince in Israel looked blithely upon his new family.  “Yaas, marster,” he said, with candour.  “Dat is my name dat sho’ is!  Jes’ Joab.  An’ I is strong as en ox,—­don’ know ’bout de snaik.  Marster, is you gwine tek me ’way from Richmond?”

“Albemarle,” said the tobacco-roller briefly.  “To-morrow morning.”

Joab studied the vine above the porch.  “Kin I go tell my ole mammy good-bye?  She’s washin’ yonder in de creek.”

Rand nodded, and the negro swung off to where, upon the grassy common sloping to Shockoe Creek, dark washer-women were spreading clothes.  The bell of the Bird in Hand rang again, and the white men went to dinner.

Following the venison, the tart, and apple brandy came the short, bright afternoon, passed by Lewis Rand upon the brig from the Indies with Tom Mocket and little Vinie and a wrinkled skipper who talked of cocoanuts and strange birds and red-handkerchiefed pirates, and spent by Gideon first in business with the elder Mocket, and then in conversation with Adam Gaudylock.  Lewis, returning at supper-time to the Bird in Hand, found the hunter altered no whit from his habitual tawny lightness, but his father in a mood that he knew, sullen and silent.  “Adam’s been talking to him,” thought the boy.  “And it’s just the same as when Mrs. Selden talks to him.  Let me go—­not he!”

In the morning, at six of the clock, the two Rands, the negro Joab, the horses, and the dogs took the homeward road to Albemarle.  Adam Gaudylock was not returning with them; he had trader’s business with the merchants in Main Street, hunter’s business with certain cronies at the Indian Queen, able scout and man-of-information business in Governor Street, and business of his own upon the elm-shaded walk above the river.  Over level autumn fields and up and down the wooded hills, father and son and the slave travelled briskly toward the west.  As the twilight fell, they came up with three white wagons, Staunton bound, and convoyed by mountaineers.  That night they camped with these men in an expanse of scrub and sassafras, but left them at dawn and went on toward Albemarle.  A day of coloured woods, of infrequent clearings, and of streams to ford, ended in an evening of cool wind and rosy sky.  They descended a hill, halted, and built their fire in a grassy space beside a river.  Joab tethered the horses and made the fire, and fried the bacon and baked the hoecake.  As he worked he sang:—­

“David an’ Cephas, an’ ole brer Mingo,
Saul an’ Paul, an’ de w’ite folk sinners—­
Oh, my chillern, follow de Lawd!”