Audrey

Another piece of woods where a great number of felled trees cumbered the

ground, more tobacco, and then, in worn fields where the tobacco had been,

knee-deep wheat rippling in the evening breeze. The wheat ran down to a

marsh, and to a wide, slow creek that, save in the shadow of its reedy

banks, was blue as the sky above. Haward, riding slowly beside his green

fields and still waters, noted with quiet, half-regretful pleasure this or

that remembered feature of the landscape. There had been little change.

Here, where he remembered deep woods, tobacco was planted; there, where

the tobacco had been, were now fields of wheat or corn, or wild tangles of

vine-rid saplings and brushwood: but for this it might have been yesterday

that he had last ridden that way.

Presently he saw the river, and then the marshes with brown dots that were

his cattle straying over them, and beyond these the home landing and the

masts of the Golden Rose. The sun was near its setting; the men had left

the fields; over all things were the stillness and peace, the encroaching

shadows, the dwindling light, so golden in its quality, of late afternoon.

When he crossed the bridge over the creek, the hollow sound that the

boards gave forth beneath his horse's hoofs had the depth and resonance of

drumbeats, and the cry of a solitary heron in the marsh seemed louder than

its wont. He passed the rolling-house and drew near to the river, riding

again through tobacco. These plants were Oronoko; the mild sweet-scented

took the higher ground. Along the river bank grew a row of tall and

stately trees: passing beneath them, he saw the shining water between

brown columns or through a veil of slight, unfolding leaves. Soon the

trees fell away, and he came to a stretch of bank,--here naked earth,

there clad in grass and dewberry vines. Near by was a small landing, with

several boats fastened to its piles; and at a little distance beyond it,

shadowed by a locust-tree, a strongly built, two-roomed wooden house, with

the earth around it trodden hard and bare, and with two or three benches

before its open door. Haward recognized the store which his father--after

the manner of his kind, merchant and trader as well as planter and maker

of laws--had built, and which, through his agent in Virginia, he had

maintained.

Before one of the benches a man was kneeling with his back to Haward, who

could only see that his garb was that of a servant, and that his hands

were busily moving certain small objects this way and that upon the board.

At the edge of the space of bare earth were a horse-block and a

hitching-post. Haward rode up to them, dismounted, and fastened his horse,

then walked over to the man at the bench.