ut a few short years to serve, better
fed and better clad than their fellows at home, found life on a Virginia
plantation no sweet or easy thing; the political and ecclesiastical
offenders enjoyed it still less, while the small criminal class found
their punishment quite sufficiently severe. To this man the life must be
a slow _peine forte et dure_, breaking his body with toil, crushing his
soul with a hopeless degradation. The thought of escape must be ever
present with him. But escape in the conventional manner, through
pathless forests and over broad streams, was a thing rarely attained to.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred failed; and the last state of the man who
failed was worse than his first.

Landless strode over to the table, and leaned his weight upon it.

"Listen!" he said. "God knows I am a desperate man! My attempt to escape
failing, there is naught but His word between me and the deepest pool of
these waters. I am no saint. I hate my enemies. Restore to me my sword,
pit me against them one by one, and I will fight my way to freedom or
die.... A fair fight, too, a rising of the people against oppression; a
challenge to the oppressor to do his worst; a gallant leading of a
forlorn hope.... But a slave insurrection! a midnight butchery! There
was one who used to tell me tales of such risings in the Indies. Murder
and rapine, fire rising through the night, planters cut down at their
very thresholds, shrieking women tortured, children flung into the
flames,--a carnival of blood and horror!"

"We are not in the Indies," said the other quietly. "There will be no
such devil's work here. Sit down and listen while I put the thing before
you as it is. There are, most iniquitously held as slaves in this
Virginia, some four hundred Commonwealth's men, each one of whom, at
home and in his own station, was a man of mark. Many were Ironsides. And
each one is a force in himself,--cool, determined, intrepid,--and wholly
desperate. With them are many victims of the Act of Uniformity, godly
men, eaten up with zeal. For their freedom they would dare much; for
their faith they would spill every drop of their blood."

"They are like our friend, the Muggletonian, fanatics all, I suppose,"
said Landless.

"Possibly. Your fanatic is the best fighting machine yet invented. Do
you not see that these two classes form a regiment against which no
trainbands, no force which these planters could raise, would stand?"

"But they are scatt