One came alone
and knelt alone, her face shadowed by her mantle. Amongst the
servants stood a slave or two, blindly staring, and behind them all
one of that felon crew sent us by the King.
Through the open windows streamed the summer sunshine, soft
and fragrant, impartial and unquestioning, caressing alike the
uplifted face of the minister, the head of the convict, and all
between. The minister's voice was grave and tender when he read
and prayed, but in the hymn it rose above the people's like the
voice of some mighty archangel. That triumphant singing shook
the air, and still rang in the heart while we said the Creed.
When the service was over, the congregation waited for the
Governor to pass out first. At the door he pressed me to go with
him and his party to his own house, and I gave him thanks, but
made excuse to stay away. When he and the nobleman who was
his guest had left the churchyard, and the townspeople too were
gone, I and my wife and the minister walked home together
through the dewy meadow, with the splendor of the morning about
us, and the birds caroling from every tree and thicket.
CHAPTER XI IN WHICH I MEET AN ITALIAN DOCTOR
THE summer slipped away, and autumn came, with the purple of
the grape and the yellowing corn, the nuts within the forest, and
the return of the countless wild fowl to the marshes and reedy river
banks, and still I stayed in Jamestown, and my wife with me, and
still the Santa Teresa rode at anchor in the river below the fort.
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