"Skip out! Leave her? Is that what you mean?" "Yes. She can always find a happy home with her mother and you. I'm off to the--" "For Heaven's sake," cried the General hoarsely, "don't do that, Eddie. Don't you dare do anything like that. I--I--I am sure we can arrange something between us. I'm not a stingy, hard-hearted man, and you know it. You deserve relief. You deserve compensation. I am your father-in-law and, damme, I'll not go back on you in your time of need. I'll make up the amount you have already lost, 'pon my soul I will, Eddie. Stand by your guns, that's all I ask." A seraphic expression came into Eddie's face. "When?" he demanded. "Immediately. Can you come to my house this evening? Alone, of course." "I should say I can!" shouted Eddie, growing two inches taller in an instant. He took the package of crape from his pocket and threw it into a cuspidor. Then he sighed profoundly. "Gad, have you ever felt like another man, General? It's great." As the General was past the point where he could risk saying another word, he maintained a strenuous silence. Eddie indulged in an expansive grin. "You asked if I could come alone. That's the only way I can come. If you ever expect to see Martha, General, you will have to come to my house to do so. Do you remember that saying about Mahomet and the mountain?" THE MAID AND THE BLADE Over two centuries ago. Virginia, fair Virginia, in her most rugged, uncouth state, yet queen of all the colonies, rich in the dignity of an advanced settlement, glorious in prophecies and ambitions; the favoured ward of England's sovereigns, the paradise of her royal pillagers, the birthplace of American Freedom. Jamestown was in the throes of a savage struggle, confined not to herself alone, but spreading to the farthermost ends of the apparently unbounded state. The capital fight was on, the contest waging between the town in which grew Bacon's rebellion and Williamsburg, in which William and Mary College had just been born, an infant venture that seemed but a mockery in the wilds. Boisterous, boasting Jamestown, since the rule of Berkeley and the unfortunate overthrow of Bacon, had resumed a state of composure which she had not known in the five preceding decades, and was beginning to look upon herself as the undisputed metropolis of the wilderness. The impudence of Williamsburg, with her feeble scholastic claims, was not even condemned--it was ignored. The crude fort at Jamestown held a merry garrison, the Governor having impressed upon royalty across the sea the importance of troops in a land where unexpected rebellions against authority might succeed the partially triumphant uprising against Sir William in 1676. Bacon's death in the October of that year had lost the fight which had been fairly won, and it was wisdom which told the new Governor that troops were essential, even in time of peace.