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 of a man, doth, while it not for one moment alters the truth and constancy of his love, yet allay for the time his selfish thirst for it.  While I was ready as ever to die for Mary Cavendish, and while the thought of her was as ever in my inmost soul, yet that effervescence of warlike spirit within me had rendered me not forgetful, but somewhat unwatchful of a word and a look of hers.  And for the time being that sad question of our estates, which forbade more than our loves, had seemed to pale in importance before this matter of maybe the rising or falling of a new empire.  Heart and soul was I in this cause, and gave myself the rein as I had longed to do for the cause of Nathaniel Bacon.

But Mary met me at the northern door, which opened directly on a locust thicket and was little used, and stood before me with her beautiful face as white as a lily but a brave light in her eyes.  “Where go you, Harry?” she whispered.