I held my pistols and watched his eyes, knowing well that all action through having its source in the brain of man, gives first evidence in the eyes.  Then the time came when I saw his impulse to charge start in his eyes, and I fired, and he fell.  Then I fired again, but wildly, for everything was in motion, and I know not whom I hit, if any one, then I felt my own right leg sink under me and I knew that I was hit.  Then down on my knees I sank and put one arm through the great latch of the door, and thrust out with my knife with the free hand, and stout arms were at my shoulders striving to drag me away, but they might as well for a time have tried to drag a bar of steel from its fastenings.  I thrust out here and there, and I trow my steel drew blood, and I suppose my own flowed, for presently I was kneeling in a widening circle of red.  I cut those forcing hands from my arm, and others came.  It was one against a multitude, for the rabble after hitting wild blows as often at their friends as at their enemies had broken and fled, except those who were taken prisoners.  But the women stayed until the last and fought like wild cats, with the exception of Madam Tabitha Story, who quietly got upon her old horse, and ambled away, and cut down her own tobacco until daybreak, pressing her slaves into service.

As for the other gentlemen, they were fighting as best they could, and all the time striving vainly to gather the mob into a firm body of resistance.  None of them saw the plight I was in, nor indeed could have helped me had they done so, since there were but seven gentlemen of us in all, and some by this time wounded, and one dead.

I knelt there upon the ground before the door, slashing out as best I could with one hand, and they closed faster and thicker upon me, and at last I could no more.  I felt a stinging pain in my right shoulder, and then for a minute my senses left me.  But it was only for a moment.

When I came to myself I was lying bound with a soldier standing guard over me, though there was small need of it, and they were raining battering blows upon the door of Laurel Creek.  Somehow they had conceived the idea that there was something of great import therein, by my mad and desperate defence.  I know not what they thought, but gradually all the militia were centred at that point striving to force the door.  As for the shutters, they were heavily barred, and offered no easier entrance.  Indeed the whole house had been strengthened for defence against the Indians before the Bacon uprising, and was near as strong as a fort.  It would have been well had we all entered and defended it, though we could not have held out for long, through not being provisioned.

At last Captain Jaynes and the other gentlemen begun to conceive the situation and I caught sight of them forcing their way toward me, and shouted to them with a failing voice, for I had lost much blood, to come nearer and assist me to hold the door.  Then I saw Captain Jaynes sink in his saddle, and I caught a glimpse of a mighty retreat of plunging haunches of Parson Downs’ horse, and indeed the gist of the blame for it all was afterward put upon the parson’s great fiery horse, which it was claimed had run away with him first into the fight, then away from it, such foolish reasons do men love to give for the lapses of the clergy.