Some I had
met, many I knew of, but two or three gave me a start. There was a
planter in Henricus who had treated me like dirt, and some names from
Essex county that I did not expect. Especially there were several in
James Town itself--one a lawyer body I had thought the obedient serf of
the London merchants, one the schoolmaster, and another a drunken
skipper of a river boat. But what struck me most was the name of
Colonel Beverley.
"Are you sure of all these?" I asked.
"Sure as death," he said. "I'm not saying that they're all friends of
yours, Mr. Garvald. Ye've trampled on a good wheen toes since you came
to these parts. But they're all men to ride the ford with, if that
should come which we ken of."
Some of the men on the list were poor settlers, and it was our business
to equip them with horse and gun. That was to be my special duty--that
and the establishing of means by which they could be summoned quickly.
With the first Mercer could help me, for he had his hand on all the
lines of the smuggling business, and there were a dozen ports on the
coast where he could land arms. Horses were an easy matter, requiring
only the doling out of money. But the summoning business was to be my
particular care. I could go about the country in my ordinary way of
trade without exciting suspicion, and my house was to be the rendezvous
of every man on the list who wanted news or guidance.
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