The mob took a fancy to that new cry of Mary Cavendish's, and every
now and then the field rang with it. "Remember Nathaniel Bacon,
remember Nathaniel Bacon!" It had a curious effect, through starting
in a distant quarter, where some of the fiercest of the workers were
grouped, then coming nearer and nearer, till the whole field rang
with that wide overspread of human voice, above the juicy slashing
of the tobacco plants.
We had been at work some little time when a tall woman in black on a
black horse came up at a steady amble, her horse being old. She
dismounted near me and her horse went to nibbling the low-hanging
boughs of a locust nearby, and the moon shone full on her face, and
I saw she was the Widow Tabitha Story, with that curious patch on
her forehead. Down to the tobacco she bent and went to work stiffly
with unaccustomed hands to such work, and then again rang that cry
of "Remember Nathaniel Bacon!" And when she heard that, up she
reared herself, and raised such a shrill response of "Remember
Nathaniel Bacon!" in a high-sobbing voice, as I never heard.
And after that for a minute the field seemed to fairly howl with
that cry of following, and memory for the dead hero, always Madam
Tabitha Story's voice in the lead, shrieking over it like a cat's.
"Lord, have mercy on us," said Parson Downs at my elbow. "She will
have all England upon us, and wherefore could not the women have
kept out of this stew?"
With that he went over to the widow and strove to quiet her, but she
only shrieked with more fury, with Mistresses Longman and Allgood to
aid her, and then--came in a mad rush upon us of horse and foot,
the militia, under Capt. Robert Waller.