University of Virginia Library

74. CHAPTER LXXIV.
THE REMOVAL OF THE POWDER.

It was nearly midnight, and St. John was standing listlessly
on the door-step of the house he occupied, when raising
his eyes, he saw the glimmer of a light in the tall tower
where the stranger pursued his labors.

He hesitated for a moment, but soon made up his mind.
He slowly set forward toward the light.

He quickly reached the house, and ascended the winding
stair-case. The stranger awaited him, with outstretched hand,
on the threshold.

“Welcome, friend,” said the worker, who was clad as before
in his somber black dress, “welcome back to the capital.
I was waiting for you, and knew your footstep.”

St. John returned the iron grasp of the slender hand, and
took the seat which was offered him.

“You awaited me?” he said; “how is that? Did you
then know of my arrival?”

“Three days before you came I expected you. As you
know, I have many correspondents, and I heard of your
journey from three sources—but first from General Lewis.”

And the stranger touched a letter lying upon the top of
an enormous pile similar to it.

St. John nodded.

“I see,” he said, “and it will make an account of my
sickness unnecessary; perhaps I need not even speak of my
adventures on the border.”

“It is useless, I may as well say frankly. I know all that

happened to you—your wound, your journey in the litter,
your return. My correspondent gave me every detail.”

St. John nodded again.

“Well,” he said, “so I come back. You see I have not
carried out my plan of going down Belle Riviere and the
Mississippi. I go to Europe by the eastern route.”

And St. John sat down opposite the stranger. That personage,
for some reason, did not seem disposed to combat
the resolution of his companion; he did not reply even to
his last observation. He remained motionless for a moment,
leaning his pale face on his hand, and then taking a letter
from a drawer, carefully read it. He then returned it, and
said,

“Well, friend, we won't discuss your movements at present;
the future can take care of itself. Let us converse as
friends. You seem sad, and are very pale.”

“As you know, I have been sick.”

“Yes.”

“And as you do not know, my character is changed.”

“I know that too.”

St. John looked at the stranger.

“How?” he said.

“Friend,” said his companion, leaning back in his chair,
and gazing thoughtfully at Mr. St. John, “to an eye so practiced
as my own, 't is not a difficult thing to penetrate that
calmness which envelops grief and hopelessness. You are
no longer the gay cavalier; you are the thoughtful man of
sorrow.”

“Well, yes,” said St. John, “I am as much.”

“You have yielded in the conflict with despair.”

“I am calm.”

“I see. That is just what I say. You retire from all
struggles henceforth—you seek merely oblivion.”

“You read my heart, friend,” said the young man,
gloomily.

“I know I do, and I say to you that your resolution is
unworthy of a brave man!”

St. John nodded.

“So be it,” he said; “I am no longer brave.”

“That may be, but you have your duty, and you shrink
from it.”

“What duty?”

“The struggle with wrong.”

St. John said nothing for some minutes; then, raising his
head:

“Do you know, friend,” he said, “that life no longer affects
me—its sorrows or joys, or good or evil? If I were
not a stoic I should be an epicurean. Let society go its
ways; it does not concern me. I do not deny that once I
thought differently, but opinions often change as we grow
older. As for me, my strength is quite broken. I could not,
if I would, enter the contest.”

He was silent, and the stranger seemed to acquiesce in his
plain wish to change the subject. He made a slow and measured
movement with his head, and replied,

“So be it; but you may yet change your views. Events
are now on the brink of an abyss, into which we'll all be
plunged. The revolution rushes on, and to-morrow may
be a day of history.”

“To-morrow?”

“I mean any day now, for the storm is about to burst!
You have been away, and do not know how the country
speaks of Dunmore, how the minds of men have been striding
on toward the battle field. Within the year which ends
next month, the North American provinces have advanced
toward rebellion with far greater rapidity than within the
entire ten years preceding. In '65, as I have before said,
the seeds of revolution were scattered broadcast by the
voice of Patrick Henry; well, in these ten years they have
been ripening, now they burst into the air. In May of last
year, as you remember, the Boston Port bill was passed, and
you were witness of the effect which it produced upon the
Burgesses and upon the people. That outrage brought forth
the general congress, which Virginia proposed six days before

Massachusetts, though it was also original with the men
of the North, since no communication could have taken place.
That congress met at Philadelphia; the Virginia convention
also met last month, in the old church where we first came
together, when, as you will recollect, I was looking at the
edifice with this very thing in view. The general congress
spoke boldly, but the Virginia convention struck the face of
royalty with its gauntlet! It was the voice of Patrick Henry
which resounded again, for he saw that the time had come!”

“Yes,” said St. John.

“It was Dunmore himself,” continued the stranger, with
gloomy pleasure; “it was Dunmore who placed his shoulder
to the car which will finally crush him! And here see the
wondrous ways of Providence! the proof that all men are
puppets in an invisible hand! At the moment when the
general congress rose in Philadelphia, this man was plotting
treachery upon the Sciota! He thought that he was banding
the savages against Virginia in silence and secrecy; he
was only arousing more violently the popular fury. Every
letter from the camp of General Lewis made the waters of
revolution boil and foam more angrily! A popular idea for
the crisis was needed, an especial treason on the part of the
government. Dunmore went a thousand miles through the
wilderness to supply it! He is the true author of the struggle
about to burst; his treachery will bear Dead Sea fruits;
by him the discordant elements are combined; before, there
was dissension and difference, but now there is none. The
phalanx moves forward, fully armed and in order!”

The stranger paused for a moment, and then continued.

“You may not fully realize as I do, friend,” he said, “the
full meaning of those words, `discordant elements.' Listen,
however, and I think I can tell you what they signify. The
society of Virginia is essentially composite—made up of a variety
of classes. To ascertain the character of these classes,
to analyze the elements which will enter into the struggle
before us—this has long been my study and my passion. A
poor engineer, but, delegated to touch the fuse, it has been

my great subject of investigation, the nature and the properties
of this splendid ordnance which will batter down the
walls of royalty in America, sending its roar of triumph over
the ruins!

“In Virginia, then, there are twenty different classes—
from the indented servant who toils on the glebe, and the
fisherman who sleeps in the sunshine, to the great landed
proprietor who rolls by in his coach, and lives like a feudal
baron on his splendid estate. The intermediate grades are
immensely diversified, but, as far as politics go, there are
but three prominent classes. They are, first, patriotic conservatives,
with a sprinkling of royalists or tories; next, advocates
of revolution, prepared to go all lengths; lastly,
men who wait for events, and conceal their sentiments,
read to join either side, if it acquires the ascendency.

“The first of these classes embraces the great landed
proprietors. They are the sons or grandsons of English
younger sons who came here and obtained, by industry or
favor, large tracts on the banks of our rivers. In the first
generation they often lived rudely, and worked hard; in the
second or third, they roll in coaches, and live splendidly.
They are cavaliers, or gentlemen—call them what you
please—essentially of the old English stock of country gentlemen.
They have, many of them, been educated in England,
and have traveled on the continent. They have
thus imbibed the traditions of the past. On their walls
hang the portraits of their ancestors, and they read of these
personages in the memoirs of past ages. Thus, every thing
combines to make these men royalists: family pride, education,
the fear of innovation on their class, and the dread
of Democracy. They are members of the established Church
of England, and believe in the apostolic succession. They
are attached to that constitutional royalty which recognizes
the monarch as the first gentleman of his kingdom. They
like the order of nobility because a step only separates them
from its elevation—a step which has often been passed over.
They believe in those `degrees in a state' which Shakspeare

tells of—they believe that they are better than the commoners.
They love, in a word, the whole machinery of the
English system, and recoil at the thought of opposing her.

“This class, thus imperfectly outlined, has longed for an
arrangement of the present difficulties—a peaceful solution
of all dissensions. They have voted, in the Burgesses, for
petitions and protests, but their protests have always ended
with a clause about `his Majesty's most loyal humble servants
and subjects.' They shudder and draw back when
the word revolution is uttered, and they cling to the past,
to the habitudes of London, to the sentiments and views
of their fathers.

“Now for the second class, the advocates of revolution
—those fiery souls who inhale the odor of the muttering
tempest, and rejoice as they descry its approach. These are
men of less property, though similar origin. They live, for
the most part, upon small estates, and ride to court with
their saddle-bags, and dress carelessly. They do not cultivate
that suavity and repose which is the aim of the rich
planter; they wear no velvet or lace; they speak often uncouthly,
but with a rough eloquence which arouses. In
the West they are often mountain hunters, depending for
support, in a measure, on their rifles, clad in hunting-shirts
and deer-skin buskins. They have few family traditions,
and no portraits. Their ancestors could not fee Sir Godfrey
Kneller or Van Dyck. They breathe the winds of the
great mountains, hear the noise of the torrents; the eagle
screams, from the clouds, above their lodges in the clefts of
the Alleghanies, and he is not more free and disdainful of
control than themselves. These men not only do not stand
in awe of royalty—they do not understand or think of it. It
has never come to molest them in their far mountain eyries,
and they care as little for the aristocracy of the lowland.
They listen, as in a dream, when you tell them of the chariots,
and gold plate, and the opulence of the Tidewater.
They nod their heads, and tell you that your story is interesting;
then they play with their great rifles, and follow the

flight of an eagle with their eyes, and go, singing, up the
mountain, thinking only of the buck hunt on the morrow.
When the planter of the East turns in bed to take his second
nap, the hunter is following the deer over the breezy
hills, or dashing aside the waves of the Kanawha with the
paddle of his gum-tree canoe. The elegantly-clad cavalier
receives his guests at the door of his fine mansion, bowing
low as he assists the dames from their coaches; the mountaineer
is telling stories to his comrades around the camp fire.
As the minuet commences, with its dazzling figures and stately
music, the hunter falls asleep beneath the stars. These
men, the yeomen of the East and the mountaineers of the
West, form the second class—almost ignorant of royalty, and
careless of its doings, but ready to march on it, and strike it
mortally when it invades their territory, as they would a
wolf or a panther. But I mistake. Ten years ago this was
just the picture. To-day these men have made the acquaintance
of his Majesty and of Parliament. They have not said
much, but they have looked to their rifles. You will see
them in Williamsburg soon; Goths and Huns in the streets
of Rome.

“I have said that the third class embraced the hangerson—those
men who watch events, and are prepared to side
with the strongest. They are factors, for the most part, who
have `moneys' involved in the issue—who do not wish to
quarrel with the planters, and await their action. They opposed
the non-intercourse association of last year because it
injured their business; they trade now in their patriotism,
and await the rising of the curtain. Enough of them.

“Well, now, friend,” the stranger continued, “you see
the issue; you see the elements which will enter into this
struggle. I commenced by saying that the action of Dunmore
had combined these discordant elements; and I think
you comprehend what I meant.

“The great planters, the first class, love England and
their old traditions, but they are true Englishmen, and love
their personal liberty more. They are afraid of Democracy,

but they are more afraid of Parliament. They would risk
their lives to preserve the legitimate action of the sovereign
from insult; they will die before they'll bow to what is despotism.
Well, the treachery of Dunmore has revolted this
class profoundly; his insults have aroused their hot blood;
they hate him, and hate the government which instructed
him, and are ready to strike him. They overmatch, lastly,
the pure royalists so immensely that this element is completely
paralyzed.

“The second class, the yeomen and the hunters, are
aroused, too—that is, made to see that the time has come.
They now understand that their own is a popular sentiment
—that, when they march, it will be with an ever-increasing
force as they proceed. They feel that the treachery of Dunmore
has matured all: they unite with the planters.

“The third class are accustomed to watch the times.
They see that the liberty stock is rising. They begin to
understand that their debts to English houses will be abrogated
by a struggle with the mother country. They now
press forward, and are flaming patriots. They shout `Liberty!'
and then look round for applause. It is Dunmore's
treachery which has decided these men, too: they march
with the rest.

“Well, friend,” added the stranger, raising his head,
“you now know what has taken place in your absence.
The tornado, long blowing, is beginning to roar; royal authority
trembles in the balance, and is weighed, and found
wanting. The fiery finger has traced the flaming letters on
the wall, Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin! `God hath numbered
thy kingdom and finished it!' The monarch, in his
palace, already hears the roar of the unloosed waters.
Those waters commenced, a mere rill, a thread upon the expanse
of the land; but they have rolled on and gathered
strength; from year to year they have increased; at last
they rush toward the sea, whose surges are lashed by the
tempest! On the banks of the great stream a poor wanderer
stands musing. It is myself, friend! My part has

been to follow it in its august flow from the source—to remove,
when I could, the obstructions in its bed—to widen
and clear out the channel. If I have assisted, thus, the infant
stream of Liberty, I have not lived in vain. My mission
was to perform this service, and I have tried to fulfill it.
The stream rushes onward now, and I disappear. Henceforth
there is little for me to do but to throw myself into
the current and share its fate. Swallowed up in the billows,
lost in the ranks, I have, henceforth, my arm alone to offer.
Seek me here in the autumn of this year and, I predict, you
will not find me. Before that time, all will be decided;
even now events rush to their fulfillment!”

As the stranger spoke, the neigh of a distant horse was
heard, and, bending forward, he listened.

“They are on their march!” he said.

“Whom?” said St. John, rising.

“Wait; you will see,” and the stranger led the way to
the open window.

It was a clear, moonlight night, and the mellow radiance
slept peacefully on the roofs of the houses. No sound disturbed
the deep silence except the murmur of the sea breeze
dying away in the distance.

But as St. John and the stranger leaned forth and listened,
a second neigh, much closer than the first, was borne
on the night wind to their ears.

Then, in the deep silence, a measured tramp was heard,
sabers gleamed in the moonlight, and a body of men advanced
along Gloucester street, and turned into Palace
street.

At the head of these men rode a horseman wrapped in a
cloak, and it was his animal which had neighed.

From their lofty post the stranger and St. John witnessed
the silent advance of the company, and soon saw a light
glimmer in a window of the palace, before which the men
halted.

“Ah!” said St. John, “these are—”

“Marines from the schooner Magdalen, which lies at Burwell's

Ferry on James river, yonder. The horseman is
Captain Collins.”

“What is their object?”

“Look and listen, friend,” said the stranger, “and you
will see.”

St. John leaned further out and listened, a color for the
first time invading his pale cheek, and his eyes ardently
plunging into half darkness.

A colloquy seemed to be going on in front of the palace,
but this lasted for a few minutes only. Almost immediately
the noise of wheels was heard, and the chariot of Lord
Dunmore, drawn by six horses, and surrounded by his guards,
commanded by Lindon, drove slowly, and with apparent caution,
out of Palace street, and disappeared in the direction
of Montebello, the Governor's mansion, some six miles below
Williamsburg.

“Do you understand?” said the stranger, whose lips wore
an expression of the most withering scorn; “do you know
what that means, friend?”

“Speak!”

“His Excellency flies to his country seat, leaving his
family behind!”

“Flies! What is his fear?”

“Listen and look!”

As the stranger spoke, he extended his hand in the moonlight,
and St. John saw the troop of men march to the powder
magazine, rapidly place fifteen or twenty barrels of
powder in carts, and then quickly retrace their steps in
the direction from which they had come.

“They are disarming the town!” cried St. John, starting
up, and drawing his sword; “give the alarm, friend, or they
will escape!”

And he threw himself toward the door, with flashing
eyes, and cheeks crimson with passion.

The heavy hand of the stranger violently arrested him.
St. John looked impatiently at the hand on his shoulder,
at the cold and collected face.

“Why do you stop me?” he said.

“Because I do not recognize your right to forestall events
and embarrass the cause.”

“Embarrass!”

“Yes. Can you misunderstand?”

“Speak!”

“That powder is, in all, fifteen half barrels of fifty pounds
each. We have ten times the amount safely stored. It is
necessary that this powder should be removed. It was
foreseen—”

“Foreseen!”

“By myself and others. Were you to arouse Williamsburg
now you would oppose some frightened burghers, half
asleep, to a band of armed marines, stimulated by drink.
The result would be unnecessary loss of life and defeat.
The injury to the cause is, however, the paramount thing.”

“Injury!”

“Yes, friend,” said the stranger, coolly, “I repeat that it
is in the first degree desirable that Lord Dunmore should
perfect this outrage. In a week you will understand me.
The powder is valueless—the outrage is of immense value
to the cause! Do you not comprehend the enormous importance
of this blow—of an armed encounter between the
Governor and the people, before an overwhelming force is
marched hither? The great masses busy themselves little
about abstract principles, but every one will understand this
midnight robbery. In ten days Virginia will thrill to her
remotest borders with wrath and indignation. I would not,
for the whole English arsenal in the Tower, have that powder
obstructed—have those men molested![1] Do you understand
now?”

St. John fell back, murmuring.

“Let us now get some sleep, for the events of the morrow
will need fresh arms, perhaps, friend,” said the stranger;
“it is Dunmore who plays our whole game for us.
He is but a tyro! for he's staked the authority of his

master in Virginia against eight barrels of powder, and
he'll lose!”

With which words the stranger coolly resumed his seat.

St. John retired to his lodgings, making an appointment
to meet the stranger at the Raleigh at sunrise, and soon
the town was as silent as before.

The powder marauders, with their illustrious master, had
come and gone as silently as shadows.