Whether the geese brought it or not, bad weather came with them. Half a gale came driving the rain before it down the river. Gadabout lay with her bulkheads closed tight about her forward cockpit, and must have looked most dismal. But inside, dry and warm, she was a very cheery little craft. We listened quite contentedly to the uproar, looking out from our windows upon windswept marsh and scudding clouds and the fussy little wavelets of our harbour. It added to our sense of coziness to look through a stern window out upon the river where the waters piled and broke white, in their midst an anchored schooner with swaying masts, tipsy between wind and tide. One day when the heavens had gone blue again, though tattered clouds were still racing across, we hoisted anchor for another visit to Westover. When Gadabout poked her head out of the creek, she saw a queer looking craft busy on the James. It was a government buoy-tender, an awkward side-wheeler with a derrick forward, and big red sticks and black ones lying on deck. As we passed the tender, it was moving the red buoy at the mouth of our creek farther out into the river. Evidently the shoals were encroaching upon the channel. Gadabout showed little interest in the strange boat and its doings; and, unconcernedly turning her back, headed up the river. Of course buoys were all very well and she found them quite a help in getting about; but all this fussy shifting of them by a few feet mattered little to her, for she was on the wrong side of them most of the time anyway. However, we thought of how differently the watchful buoy-tender would be regarded by the heavy laden freighters that would pass that way, their rusty hulls plowing deep. To them how important that each buoy, each inanimate flagman of the river route, should stand true where danger lies and truly point the fairway. Reaching the little cove below the steamboat pier, Gadabout ran close in and cast anchor. She may well have been proud of the quite perceptible waves that she sent rolling to the shore and of the quite audible swish that they made on the beach. That morning we saw the landward front of Westover, and straightway forgot all about the more pretentious river front. You step from the house down into an old-time courtyard. At first you do not see much of the courtyard itself, for you have heard of its noted entrance gates, perhaps the first example of ornamental iron-work in the colonies, and they stand quite conspicuously in front of you. These gates were imported from England by Colonel William Byrd, whose initials, W.E.B., appear inwrought in monogram.