Mrs. Douthat could not add much to the little that we already knew about a small brick building on the plantation that has long been pointed out from the steamers' decks as one of the oldest buildings in the country. It stands on the river bluff near the present home. If as old as is usually supposed, it is doubtless one of the early garrison houses, and must have seen desperate days on this Indian-harassed peninsula. In this house, up to the time of her death a few years ago, lived the old mammy of the family. She was one of the last of a type developed through generations of plantation life, and now disappearing with it. Her place was at the end of a long line of dusky nurses, the first of whom landed nearly three centuries ago at James Towne, and crooned to the children of the royal governors the weird minor lullabies of jungle-land. At present, Elias, a gray-haired negro, lives in the little old house. Every morning he goes to see Mrs. Douthat; and he seldom varies the greeting: "How is you dis mawnin', Miss Mary? I sut'n'y is glad to see you able to be up an' 'roun'. You know you an' me is chil'en of de same day." Weyanoke, like most of the large plantations on the James, has a postoffice in the house. Our visit over, we gathered up quite a promising lot of mail and started homeward with the Commodore looking like a peripatetic branch of the rural free delivery. Evening was gathering in as we walked back along the field roads. The air was warm, a gentle breeze went rustling through the corn, and the autumn haze just veiled field and marsh and distant woods. Upon reaching our shore-boat, we pushed out upon the marsh waterway. In our absence the tide had been slowly creeping up on reeds and rushes, had reached its height, and (leaving a brown, bubbly line upon each slender stalk to show that the law had been fulfilled) had started slowly down again. But the ebb had only begun. The marsh was yet almost tide-full, and all its channels were water-lanes. Each little way was like every other, and one could well wander amiss down between those winding walls of sedges. We paddled very slowly, often stopping to let the boat drift on the ebb tide. Why might we not find out the secret of the marshes if we went very softly through the heart of them?--that secret of which the slender reeds are always whispering; that mystery that keeps them always a-shiver. Is it something they have hidden from the searching tide? Is it known to the little marsh-hen that cunningly builds her nest at the foot of the sedges? Is it guessed by the restless finny folk that slip and search beneath the brown waters?