"I am."

"Thank you, Sir Albert," she began; but he quickly interrupted her with:

"Thank not me, sweet child; but come, tell me what hath gone amiss, and
have no fear, for I am powerful enough to save you from any harm."

While the villanous little coward Giles Peram crawled from the hedge and
hurried back to town, the old man led the victim of his insults to the
church, where they sat upon the step at the front of the vestibule. She
had no fear of this good old man, whom she instinctively loved, and who
seemed to wield over her a strange and mysterious influence. He asked
her all about her tormentor, and she confided everything to him. She
told him of the loss of her father at sea, and how they had lived
through adversity until better days dawned, then of her mother's second
marriage, and the trouble between her brother and Hugh Price. She did
not even omit the recent uprising in which her brother had joined Bacon
and the rebels in a mad blow for freedom.

"The worst has not yet come, I greatly fear," sighed the little maid.
"The rebellion is not over, and my brother will yet, I fear, be hung by
the governor, for Mr. Price, his bitter enemy, is a firm friend of the
governor."

"He shall not be harmed, sweet maid. I have a great ship, with larger
and more destructive guns than were ever in Virginia. I have a crew
loyal even unto death, and I could bombard and destroy their town, ere
they harm either your brother, yourself or your mother."

He looked so earnest, so like a good angel of deliverance, that the
impulsive Rebecca threw her arms about his neck, and he, pressing a kiss
upon her fair young cheek, exclaimed:

"God bless you! There, I must go."

He conducted her home, went aboard his ship, and next morning the
mysterious craft had disappeared from the harbor.

There were too many exciting incidents transpiring at Jamestown for the
public to dwell long on the stranger. The same day on which the ship
disappeared, the rumor ran about town:

"Bacon has fled! Bacon has fled!"

The rumor was a truth. Robert Stevens had gone with him, and although
Mr. Lawrence explained that Bacon's wife was ill, and he had gone to
visit her, yet Berkeley, ever suspicious, construed his sudden breaking
of his parole into open hostility, and prepared to treat it accordingly.

CHAPTER XX.

BACON A REBEL.

"Hark! 'tis the sound that charms
The war-steed's wakening ears.
Oh! many a mother folds her arm