Now the hall served sometimes as a court-house, sometimes as a temporary jail, often as a ballroom, occasionally as the Governor's residence when he came to Fort Pitt from Williamsburg.
In it he gave audiences to all plaintiffs, white or Indian; in it he received deputies from other colonies or from England.
The Governor of Virginia lived on the second floor while sojourning at Pittsburg; under his white and gold apartments stretched a long, blank, stone hall, around the walls of which ran a wooden balcony half way between the stone flagging and the ceiling of massive buckeye beams.
It was in this naked and gloomy hall, damp and rank with the penetrating odour of mortar and dropping, mouldy plaster, that my Lord Dunmore consented to receive the old Cayuga chief, Logan, of the clan of the Wolf, and by right of birth—which counts not with chiefs unless they be sachems, too—the chief also of the Oquacho of the Oneida nation.
Towards dusk a company of red-coated British infantry, with drummers leading, left the barracks opposite our inn, the "Virginia Arms," and marched away towards "Governor's Hall," drummers beating "The Huron." A crowd of men and boys trailed along on either flank of the column, drawn by curiosity to catch a glimpse of Logan, "The White Man's Friend," who was to ask justice this night of the most noble Governor of Virginia, the great Earl of Dunmore.
When the distant batter of the drums, echo and beat, had died away down the dark vista of the King's Road, I left my window in the "Virginia Arms" and descended the stairway into the street below, where Jack Mount and the Weasel ruffled it bravely and swaggered to and fro, awaiting my coming.
Mulled wine and sundry cups of cider, mixed rashly with long libations of James Rolfe's humming ale, had set their heads and tongues a-buzzing. They were glorious in their dingy buckskins, coon-skin caps cocked over their left ears, thumbs hooked jauntily under their arm-pits. They now occupied the middle of the street and patrolled it gayly, singing and shouting and interrupting traffic, returning a jest for a gibe, a laugh for a smile, or a terrible threat for any wayfarer who dared complain of being hustled or trodden on.
Men instinctively accorded them the room they seemed to desire; women understood them better, and took right of way, smiling the reproof which always brought the swaggerers up, cap-tails sweeping the street in extravagant salute. For there appeared, in those two graceless bibbers of wines, that gravity and politeness of intoxication which so grotesquely parodies the dignity of gallantry, and with which it is almost hopeless for sober people to contend.
However, I spoke to them so cuttingly that they relapsed into injured silence and ambled along on either side of me without serious offence to passing citizens.
We soon found ourselves in a crowd, the current of which swept down the King's Road towards the fortress; and we followed in the wake, while past us rode companies of officers, gentlemen, and sometimes squads of the Governor's horse—those same gay, flame-coloured Virginians whom I had so admired at Johnstown a month ago.