versation.

CHAPTER V

LOVE COMES A CROPPER

"I am speaking of a war with England." These words of Colonel Lewis rang
in my ears as I rode to Salem. They had sounded fantastic when he uttered
them. Now that I was alone they repeated themselves most ominously. The
flying hoofs of my horse pounded them into my ears. War with England was
unthinkable, and yet the colonel's speech lifted me up to a dreary height
and I was gazing over into a new and very grim world.

For years, from my first connected thoughts, there had been dissension
after dissension between England and America. My father before me had
lived through similar disputes. But why talk of war now? Many times the
colonies had boiled over a bit; then some concession was made, and what
our orators had declared to be a crisis died out and became a dead issue.

To be sure another "crisis" always took the place of the defunct one, but
the great fact remained that none of those situations had led to war.
Perhaps if some one other than Colonel Lewis had indulged in the dire
foreboding it would have made less of an impression. At the time he spoke
the words I had not been disturbed. Now that I was remembering what an
unemotional level-headed man he was the effect became accumulative. The
farther I left Richfield behind and the longer I mulled over his sinister
statement the more I worried.

As I neared Salem my meditations continued disquieting and yet were highly
pleasing. I was on my way to meet Patricia Dale. I was born on the
Mattapony and left an orphan at an early age. I had gone to Williamsburg
when turning sixteen, and soon learned to love and wear gold and silver
buckles on a pewter income.

In my innocence, rather ignorance, I unwittingly allowed my town
acquaintances to believe me to be a chap of means. When I discovered their
false estimate I did not have the courage to disillusion them. My true
spending-pace was struck on my eighteenth birthday, and inside the year I
had wasted my King William County patrimony.

Just what process of reasoning I followed during that foolish year I have
never been able to determine. I must have believed it to be imperative
that I live up to the expectations of my new friends. As a complement to
this idiotic obsession there must have been a grotesque belief that
somehow, by accident or miracle, I would be kept in funds indefinitely. I
do recall my amazement at the abrupt ending of my dreams. I woke up one
morni