The Heart

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.

As for me, I believe in coming out with the truth about the clergy

and laymen, and King and peasant, alike, whether it be Cain or King

David, or Parson Downs or his Majesty King Charles the Second.

However, to do the parson justice, he did not fly until he saw the

day was lost, and I trow did afterward better service to me than he

might have done by staying. As for the burgesses, I know not whither

nor when they had gone, for they had melted away like shadows, by

reason of the great obloquy which would have attached to them,

should men in their high office have been discovered in such work.

Ralph Drake was left, who made a push toward me with a hoarse shout,

and then he fell, though not severely wounded, and then the soldiers

pressed closer. And then I felt again the door yield at my back, and

before I knew it I was dragged inside, and, in spite of the pressure

of the mob, the door was pushed to with incredible swiftness by

Humphrey Hyde's great strength, and the bolt shot.