was reported to be advancing at the head
of a thousand men, Bacon ordered the drums beat, mustered his men, and
they set out toward the Rappahanock in high spirits.

On that afternoon Bacon was occasionally irritable; at other times he
became hilarious, and at others stupid. Robert, who rode at his side,
saw that he was burning with fever, and he was glad that night when
they camped.

"Spread a tent for the general, for he is sick," said Robert. The men
could not realize how sick he was. Camp fires blazed. Brent was but a
few miles away, and his forces were deserting him by scores and coming
over to Bacon, who was not thought to be dangerously ill. When Robert
entered his tent at ten that night, he found him sitting up giving some
directions for the quartering of new troops.

"Are you better, general?" he asked.

"I am very tired. I shall lie down and sleep. I will be over this in the
morning."

As long as Robert lived, he remembered those words. He knew the general
was in a raging fever, yet he little thought it would prove fatal. He
went to his own quarters on that October night and sought repose. It was
an hour before daylight, when Mr. Drummond and Mr. Lawrence awoke him.

"General Bacon is dead," they said.

"What! dead?" cried Robert.

"Yes, dead and buried. We thought it best to bury him in the forest
where his enemies could not find him. Brent is crushed; his men have
deserted him, and all are with us. The general died very suddenly in the
arms of Major Pate."

It was the purpose of the friends of liberty to keep the death of Bacon
a secret, and there is some dispute in history as to where and when he
died. News of this character cannot be suppressed. It came out, and the
republicans of Virginia began to lose heart from that hour, while the
royalists' hopes increased.

Another general was elected to fill the place made vacant by Bacon.
Drummond, Stevens, Cheeseman, or Lawrence might have organized the army
and led them to victory; but the foolish frontiersmen chose, instead of
either of these wise men, a grotesque personage named Ingram, who had
been a rope dancer, and had no more qualifications for so important a
position than an organ grinder, as the result soon proved. He was unable
to hold them together. Colonel Hansford, the most daring young officer
in Bacon's whole army, was captured at the home of his sweetheart, and
Berkeley, to whom he was taken, decreed that he should be hung.

"Thomas H