e
over the militia, and that he was safe enough not to turn traitor
with his great store of tobacco at stake, and that should the court
proceed to extremes with the Gloucester plant-cutters, such a flame
would leap to life in Virginia as would choke England with the smoke
of its burning.

We knew no more than the fact of the sending, but that afternoon
came riding into Jamestown colonel Kemp with a small body of horse,
having left the rest and the foot in Gloucester, there to suppress
further disorder, and with him, bound to their saddles, some
twenty-two prisoners, glaring about them with defiant faces and
covered with dust and mire, and some with blood.

Something there was about that awful glow of red on face, on hand,
or soaking through homespun sleeve or waistcoat, that was like the
waving of a battle-flag or the call of a trumpet. Such a fury awoke
in us who looked on, as never was, and the prisoners had been then
and there torn from their horses and set free, had it not been for
the consideration that undue precipitation might ruin the main
cause. But the sight of human blood shed in a righteous cause is the
spur of the brave, and goads him to action beyond all else. Quite
silent we kept when that troop rode past us on their way to prison,
though we were a gathering crowd not only of some of the best of
Virginia, but some of her worst and most uncontrolled of indenture
white slaves, and convicts, but something there must have been in
our looks which gave heart to those who rode bound to their horses,
for one and then another turned and looked back at us, and I trow
got some hope.

However, before the night fairly fell, twenty of the prisoners, upon
giving assurance of penitence, were discharged, and but two, the
ringleaders, were committed and were in the prison. The twenty-two,
being somewhat craven-hearted, and some of them indisposed by
wounds, were on their ways homeward when we were afield.

We waited for the moon to be up, which was an hour later that night.
I was all equipped in good season, and was stealing forth secretly,
lest any see me, for I wished not to alarm the household, nor if
possible to have any one aware of what I was about to do, that they
might be acquit of blame through ignorance, when I was met in the
threshold of an unused door by Mary Cavendish. And here will I say,
while marvelling at it greatly, that the excitement of a great
cause, which calls for all the enthusiasm and bravery