Governor Francis was again on his feet.

“I have a birthday gift for the fair one.  You must know that once at Whitehall I played at cartes with my lord Culpepper, and the stake on his part was one-sixth portion of that Virginian territory which is his freehold.  I won, and my lord conveyed the grant to me in a deed properly attested by the attorneys.  We call the place the Northern Neck, and ’tis all the land between the Rappahannock and the Potomac as far west as the sunset.  It is undivided, but my lord stipulated that my portion should lie from the mountains westward.  What good is such an estate to an aging bachelor like me, who can never visit it?  But ’tis a fine inheritance for youth, and I propose to convey it to Dulcinea as a birthday gift.  Some day, I doubt not, ’twill be the Eden of America.”

At this there was a great crying out and some laughter, which died away when it appeared that the Governor spoke in all seriousness.

“I make one condition,” he went on.  “Twenty years back there was an old hunter, called Studd, who penetrated the mountains.  He travelled to the head-waters of the Rapidan, and pierced the hills by a pass which he christened Clearwater Gap.  He climbed the highest mountain in those parts, and built a cairn on the summit, in which he hid a powder-horn with a writing within.  He was the first to make the journey, and none have followed him.  The man is dead now, but he told me the tale, and I will pledge my honour that it is true.  It is for Dulcinea to choose a champion to follow Studd’s path and bring back his powder-horn.  On the day I receive it she takes sasine of her heritage.  Which of you gallants offers for the venture?”

To this day I do not know what were Francis Nicholson’s motives.  He wished the mountains crossed, but he cannot have expected to meet a pathfinder among the youth of the Tidewater.  I think it was the whim of the moment.  He would endow Elspeth, and at the same time test her cavaliers.  To the ordinary man it seemed the craziest folly.  Studd had been a wild fellow, half Indian in blood and wholly Indian in habits, and for another to travel fifty miles into the heart of the desert was to embrace destruction.  The company sat very silent.  Elspeth, with a blushing cheek, turned troubled eyes on the speaker.

As for me, I had found the chance I wanted.  I was on my feet in a second.  “I will go,” I said; and I had hardly spoken when Grey was beside me, crying, “And I.”

Still the company sat silent.  ’Twas as if the shadow of a sterner life had come over their young gaiety.  Elspeth did not look at me, but sat with cast-down eyes, plucking feverishly at a rose.  The Governor laughed out loud.

“Brave hearts!” he cried.  “Will you travel together?”

I looked at Grey.  “That can hardly be,” he said.

“Well, we must spin for it,” said Nicholson, taking a guinea from his pocket.  “Royals for Mr. Garvald, quarters for Mr. Grey,” he cried as he spun it.