The winding of a brass horn brought me out of my concealment to peep again down into the street, where people were flocking around a public crier, who stood on a horse-block blowing his horn.
"Attention! Attention!" he cried, unfolding a paper, and presently commenced to read his news to the crowd:
"By permission of the Right Honourable Earl of Dunmore, Governor of Virginia! Four days' sport on Roanoke Plain. The Colonial Club offering prizes of £100 and £50; the Richmond Club offering two purses of £50. Attention! Sport on the Roanoke; an even and delightsome plain, most sweet and pleasant. To-day the Nobleman's and Gentleman's Purse of £50, free for any horse except Doctor Connolly's Scimitar, who won the plate last season. Second, a silver cup worth £12. Tuesday, County Subscription Purse of £50. No person will erect a booth or sell liquor without subscribing £2 to expenses of races.
"Gentlemen fond of fox-hunting will meet at the Buckeye Tavern by daybreak during the races.
"God save the King!"
He folded his paper, picked up his horn, and stepped down from the horse-block. After a little while I heard his horn again, sounding at the north angle of the square, and his strident voice, announcing the races, came fitfully on the wind.
I turned back into the room and began my toilet. How strange to find this town, undisturbed in its rural pleasures, busy about its own affairs, while scarce a night's journey to the north the frontier was in ashes, and the dead lay in the charred embers of their own door-sills!
How strange to look out on the peace of these sunny streets, with the cinders of Cresap's camp still clinging to my hunting-shirt; with my own blood caking the sore on my arm where a Cayuga child had thrust a lighted pine-splinter into my flesh! Strange!—ay, astonishing that these people here behind their fortress, their block-housen, their earthworks and stockades, should forget those who dwelt beyond the gates, wresting the dark soil, inch by inch, from the giant pines of the wilderness.
With a knife which Cresap had given me, I sat down to scrape the mud and filth from my hunting-shirt and to pick out the burrs and docks which clotted the fringe on my leggings.
Sombre thoughts filled me; I had a hard rôle to play before Lord Dunmore; I had a harder rôle to act before Silver Heels, if she were still here in Pittsburg.