staunch, true men, with muscles of iron and hearts of oak, to commands which be manifestly against their own best interests, it is verily beyond understanding, and only to be explained by the working of those hidden springs of nature which have been in men’s hearts since the creation, moving them along one common road of herding to one common end.  As I sat there I wondered not so much at the plot which was simply to destroy all the young tobacco plants, that there be not an over-supply and ruinous prices therefor next year, as at the fact that the whole colony to a man did not arise and rebel against the order of the king in that most infamous Navigation Act which forbade exportation to any place but England, and load their ships for the Netherlands, and get the full worth of their crops.  Well I knew that some of the burgesses were secretly in favour of this measure, and why should one man, Governor Culpeper, for the king, hold for one minute the will of this strong majority in abeyance?

I reasoned it out within myself that one cause might lie in that distrust and suspicion of his neighbour as to his good-will and identical interest with himself which is inborn with every man, and in most cases strengthens with his growth.  When a movement of rebellion against authority is on foot, he eyes all askance, and speaks in whispering corners of secrecy, not knowing when he strikes his first blow whether his own brother’s hand will be with him against the common tyrant, or against himself.

Were it not for this lamentable quality of the human heart, which will prevent forever the perfect concerting of power to one end, such a giant might be made of one people that it could hold all the world and all the nations thereof at its beck and call.  But that cannot be, even in England, which had known and knows now and will know again that division of interest and doubts, every man of his brother’s heart, which weaken the arm against the common foe.

But, reflecting in such wise, I came no nearer to the answer to my quandary as to my best course for the protection of Mary Cavendish.

I sat there on that rock glittering like frost-work in the May sunlight and watched the river current until it seemed to me that my rock and all Virginia were going out on the tide to sea and back to England, where, had I landed then, I would have lost my head and all my wondering with it, and my old astonishment, which I had had from a boy, was upon me, that so many things that be, according to the apparent evidence of our senses are not, and how can any man ever be sure that he is on sea or land, or coming or going?  And comes there not to all of us some day a great shock of knowledge of the slipping past of this world, and all the history thereof which we think of so much moment, and that we only are that which remains?  But then verily it seemed to me that the matter of the tobacco plot and Mary Cavendish’s danger was of more moment than aught else in the century.