When I got back to James Town, Faulkner would report on his visitors,
and he seems to have had many. Rough fellows would ride up at the
darkening, bringing a line from Mercer, or more often an agreed
password, and he had to satisfy their wants and remember their news. So
far I had had no word from Lawrence, though Mercer reported that Ringan
was still sending arms. That tobacco-shed of mine would have made a
brave explosion if some one had kindled it, and, indeed, the thing more
than once was near happening through a negro's foolishness. I spent all
my evenings, when at home, in making a map of the country. I had got a
rough chart from the Surveyor-General, and filled up such parts as I
knew, and over all I spread a network of lines which meant my ways of
sending news. For instance, to get to a man in Essex county, the word
would be passed by Middle Plantation to York Ferry. Thence in an
Indian's canoe it would be carried to Aird's store on the Mattaponey,
from which a woodman would take it across the swamps to a clump of
hemlocks. There he would make certain marks, and a long-legged lad from
the Rappahannock, riding by daily to school, would carry the tidings to
the man I wanted. And so forth over the habitable dominion.
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