The grim old fortress was untenanted, except by this Indian maiden, for nearly a hundred years, and then "the dreadful pyrate Blackbeard" secretes his ill-gotten treasures in the subterranean vault. To and fro he moves with muffled oars, mans the port-holes with his guns, and rests secure from assault. With his rifles he can pick out every man who dares to thread the defile. Presently his outgoing is watched, and one fine day he is assailed, and conquered on board his own sloop. He was a bold buccaneer, and had given orders that at a signal his magazine should be fired and friend and foe perish together. But his followers preferred surrender to death, and were all brought captive to Jamestown. Very brutal was the triumph of his captors. He had given trouble and resisted long, and now they would make sure of him. They returned with his gory head hanging from the prow of their vessel, and out of the skull that had housed his busy brain they fashioned a drinking-cup and rimmed it with silver, after the manner of their fathers in the old days of England. He became the Captain Kidd of Virginia waters. His phantom ship could be seen on moonlight nights on the York River, and his headless body would disembark therefrom and hover over his buried treasure. The treasure was never found; perhaps it is there still under some stone of the old fortress. After this we hear nothing for many years of the Old Stone House. It crumbled away very little, being so strong; but nobody is tempted to approach it or use it in any way. The luxuriant vines bear great trumpet-shaped flowers, and clothe the walls with a brilliant beauty, seen only by the bats, hanging by crooked black fingers from every projection, and ready to fly in the face of the intruder, or the noxious serpents which wind in and out and increase and multiply with no check from man, their enemy. Finally, about the year 1776, tenants appear again in the little fortress, ghostly forms throng the wide door, strange sounds of exultation are borne by the winds, and fitful unreal lights flit about or hover over the spot. From a distance these are observed, but there is no investigation, indeed the times are too stirring to admit of investigation. The Governor of Virginia has fled from the irate Commonwealth, and digests his chagrin on board his own sloop, riding at a safe distance near Yorktown. Men are in arms, burning words leap from lip to lip,--a great crisis is at hand, a great cloud is rising, soon to darken the land and break in the thunder and lightning of a mighty tempest.