nothing, and once was our house burned, and we escaped barely with our lives, and then came Nat Bacon, and blessings upon him, for he made the beginning of a good work. And then did the soldiers riding to meet him, so trample down our tobacco fields with horse hoofs, that the leaves lay in a green pumice, and that crop lost. And then this Navigation Act, which I understand but little of except that it be to fill the king's pockets and empty ours, has made our crops of no avail, since we but sent the tobacco as a gift to the king, so little we have got in return. And look, look!" she shrieked, "I pray ye look, and sure this is the best I have, and me always going as well attired as any of my station in England. I pray ye look! Sure 'tis past mending, and the stitches and the cloth go together, as will the colony, unless somewhat be done in season to mend its state." So saying, up she flung her arm, and all the under side of the body of her gown was in rags, and up she flung the other, and that was in like case. Then the other woman, who was a strapping lass, and had been a barmaid ere she came to Virginia in search of a husband, where she had found one Richard Longman afraid not to do her bidding and wed her, since he was as small and mild a man as ever was, joined in: "I say with Mistress Allgood," she shrieked out, and flung her own buxom arms aloft with such disclosures that a roar of laughter spread through the hall, and her husband blushed purple, and a protest gurgled in his throat. But at that his wife, who verily was a shrew, seized upon him by both of his little shoulders, and shook him until his face wagged like a rag baby with an utter limpness of helplessness, and shouted out, amid peals of laughter that seemed to shake the roof, that here was a pretty man, here forsooth was a pretty man. Here was her own husband, who let his own lawful wife go clad in such wise and lifted not a finger! Yes, lifted not a finger, and had to be dragged into the present doings by the very hair of his head by his wife, and that was not all. Yes, that was not all. Then, with that, up she flung one stout foot, and lo, a great hole was in the heel of her stocking, and the other, and then she flirted the hem of her petticoat into sight, and that was all of a fringe with rags. "Look, look!" she shrieked out. "I tell ye, Thomas Longman, I will have them look, and see to what a pass that cursed Navigation Act and the selling of the tobacco for naught, hath brought a decent woman. How long is it since I had a new petticoat? How long, I pray? Oh, Lord, had the men of this colony but the spirit of the women! Had but brave Nat Bacon lived!" With that, this woman, who had been perchance drinking too much beer for her head, though she was well used to it, burst into a storm of tears, and sprang to her feet, and cried out in a wild voice like a furious cat's: "Up with ye, I say! And why do ye stop and parley? And why do