London, where he arrived early in 1662. He made his way back to Kincardine, where he found his estate sequestered, his wife and one child dead in poverty, the other disappeared. From a neighbor he learned that the boy had run away to sea after his mother's death, but what his fate had been he never knew. Weary and disheartened, Stewart retraced his steps to London, and after overcoming obstacles innumerable, occasioned mostly by his want of money, laid his case before the king. Charles listened to him kindly enough, for his office had not yet grown a burden to him, and finally granted him a patent for two thousand acres of land along the upper Potomac. It was a gift which cost the king nothing, and one of a hundred such he bestowed upon his favorites as another man would give a crust of bread for which he had no use. Stewart returned to Virginia with his patent in his pocket, and built himself a home in what was then a wilderness.

In five or six years he had cleared near three hundred acres of land, had it planted in sweet-scented tobacco, for which the Northern Neck was always famous, bought two-score negroes to tend it, and began to see light ahead. It was at this time that he met Marjorie Usner, while on a visit to Williamsburg, and he married her in 1670, having in the mean time erected a more spacious residence than the rude log-hut which had previously been his home. He was at that time a man nigh fifty years of age, but handsome enough, I dare say, and well preserved by his life of outdoor toil. Certainly Mistress Marjorie, who must have been much younger, made him a good wife, and when he died, in 1685, he left a son and a daughter, besides an estate valued at several thousands of pounds, accumulated with true Scottish thrift. It was this daughter who named the estate Riverview, and though the house was afterwards remodeled, the name was never changed. The Stewarts continued to live there, marrying and giving in marriage, and growing ever wealthier, for the next half century, at the end of which time occurred the events that brought me into being.

In 1733, Thomas Stewart, great-grandson of the Scotsman, was master of Riverview. His portrait, which hangs to-day to the left of the fireplace in the great hall, shows him a white-haired, red-faced, choleric gentleman, with gray eyes and proudly smiling mouth. He had been chosen a member of the House of Burgesses, as had his father before him, and was one of the most considerable men in the county. His son, Tom, was just twenty-one, and had inherited from his father the hasty temper and invincible stubbornness which belong to all the Stewarts.

It was in the fall of 1733 that they made the trip to Williamsburg which was to have such momentous consequences. The House of Burgesses was in session, and Mr. Stewart, as the custom was, took his whole family with him to the capital. I fancy I can see them as they looked that day. The great coach, brought from London at a cost of so many thousand pounds of tobacco, is polished until it shines again. The four horses are harnessed to it, and Sambo, mouth stretched from ear to ear, drives it around to the front of the mansion, where a broad flight of stone steps leads downward from the wide veranda. The footmen and outriders spring to their places, their liveries agleam with buckles, the planter and his lady and their younger son enter the coach, while young Tom mounts his horse and prepares to ride by the window. The odorous cedar chests containing my lady's wardrobe are strapped behind or piled on top, the negroes form a grinning avenue, the whip cracks, and they are off, half a dozen servants following in an open cart. It is a four days' journey to Williamsburg, over roads whose roughness tests the coach's strength to the uttermost but it is the one event of all the year to this isolated family, and small wonder that they look forward to it with eager anticipation.

Once arrived at Williamsburg, what craning of necks and waving of handkerchiefs and kissing of hands to acquaintances, as the coach rolls along the wide, white, sandy street, scorching in the sun, with the governor's house, called by courtesy a palace, at one end, and the College of William and Mary at the other, and perhaps two hundred straggling wooden houses in between. The coaches and chariots which line the street give earnest of the families already assembled from Princess Ann to Fairfax and the Northern Neck. My lady notes that the Burkes have at last got them a new chariot from London, and her husband looks with appreciative eyes at the handsome team of matched grays which draw it. As for young Tom, his eyes, I warrant, are on none of these, but on the bevy of blooming girls who promenade the side-path, arrayed in silks and satins and brocades, their eyes alight, their cheeks aglow with the joy of youth and health. Small blame to him, say I, for that is just where my own eyes would have been.

That very night Governor Gooch gave a ball at his palace, and be sure the Stewart family was there, my lady in her new London gown of flowered damask in the very latest mode, and Tom in his best suit of peach-blossom velvet, and in great hopes of attracting to himself some of the bright eyes he had seen that afternoon. Nor was he wholly unsuccessful, for one pair of black eyes rested on his for a moment,—they were those of Mistress Patricia Wyeth,—and he straightway fell a victim to their charms, as what young man with warm heart and proper spirit would not? Young Tom must himself have possessed unusual attractions, or a boldness in wooing which his son does not inherit, for at the end of a week he disturbed his father at his morning dram to inform him that he and Mistress Patricia had decided to get married.

"Married!" cried the elder Stewart. "Why, damme, sir, do you know who the
Wyeths are?"

"I know who Patricia is," answered young Tom very proudly, his head well up at this first sign of opposition. "I care naught about the rest of them."

"But I care, sir!" shouted his father. "Why, the girl won't have a shilling to bless herself with. Old Wyeth has gambled away every penny he possesses, and a good many more than he possesses, too, so they tell me, at his infernal horse-racing and cock-fighting, and God knows what else. A gentleman may play, sir,—I throw the dice occasionally, myself, and love to see a well-matched, race as well as any man,—but he ceases to be a gentleman the moment he plays beyond his means,—a fact which you will do well to remember. A pretty match for a Stewart 'pon my word!"

During this harangue young Tom would have interrupted more than once, but his father silenced him with a passionate waving of his arm. At last he was compelled to pause for want of breath to say more, and the boy got in a word.

"All this is beside the point, father," he said hotly. "My word is given, and I intend to keep it. Even if it were not given, I should still do my best to win Patricia, because I love her."

"Love her, and welcome!" cried his father. "Marry her, if you want to. But you'll never bring a pauper like that inside my house while I am alive."

"Nor after you are dead, if you do not wish it," answered Tom, with his head higher in the air than ever.

"No, nor after I am dead!" thundered the old man, his anger no doubt carrying him farther than he intended going. "You are acting like a scoundrel, sir. You know well enough I can't cut you out of the estate, since you are the eldest, so you think to take advantage of me."

"Never fear, sir," cried Tom, his lips white with anger and his eyes ablaze. "You shall ask me back to Riverview yourself ere I return there; yes, and beg my wife's pardon for insulting her."

"Then, by God, you'll never return!" snorted his father, and without waiting to hear more, Tom stalked from the room and from the house. I think