is Ironsides were to Oliver, but none--" he
stretched out his hand, thin, white, and delicate as a woman's, and laid
it upon the brown one resting upon the table. "Lad," he said in a
gravely tender voice, "I have none upon this plantation in whom I can
put absolute trust. There are few Oliverians here, and they are like
Win-Grace Porringer, in whom zeal hath eaten up discretion. Lad, I need
a helper! I have spoken to you freely; I have laid my heart before you;
and why? Because I, who was and am a gentleman, see in you a gentleman,
because I would take your word before all the oaths of all the peasant
servants in Virginia, because you have spirit and judgment; because,--in
short, because I could love you as I loved your father before you. You
have great wrongs. We will right them together. Be my lieutenant, my
confidant, my helper! Come! put your hand in mine and say, 'I am with
you, Robert Godwyn, heart and soul.'"

Landless sprang to his feet. "It were easy to say that," he said
hoarsely, "for, in all the two years I lay rotting in prison, and in
these weeks of sordid misery here in Virginia, yours is the only face
that has looked kindly upon me, yours the only voice that has told me I
was believed.... But it is a fearful thing you propose! If all go as you
say it will,--why WELL! but if not, Hell will be in the land. I must
have time to think, to judge for myself, to decide--"

The door swung stealthily inward, and in the opening appeared the dead
white face, with the great letter sprawling over it, of Master Win-Grace
Porringer.

"There are boats on the creek," he said. "Two coming up, one coming
down."

Godwyn nodded. "I hold conference to-night with men from this and the
two neighboring plantations. You will stay where you are and see and
hear them. Only you must be silent; for they must not know that you are
not entirely one with us, as I am well assured you will be."

"They are Oliverians?"

"All but two or three."

"I secured the mulatto," interrupted the Muggletonian.

"Ay," said Godwyn, "I thought it well to have one slave representative
here to-night. These mulattoes are devils; but they can plot, and they
can keep a still tongue. But I shall not trust him or his kind too far."

The peculiar knock--four strokes in all--sounded upon the door, and
Porringer went to it. "Who is there?" passed on the one side, and "The
sword of the Lord and of Gideon" on the other. The door swung open, and
there enter