"Why, Tom," he cried, as he saw me, "I must have been asleep."
"So you have," I said, shaking hands with him, and pressing him back into the chair, from which he would have risen. "But what fortunate chance has brought you here?"
"The most fortunate in the world!" he cried, his eyes agleam. "You know I told you that the governor and House of Burgesses would not bear quietly the project to leave our frontier open to the enemy. Well, read this," and he drew from his pocket a most formidable looking paper. I took it with a trembling hand and carried it to the window, but the moon was almost set, and I could not decipher it.
"What is it?" I asked, quivering with impatience.
"Here, give it to me," he said, with a light laugh, which reminded me of the night I had seen him first in the governor's palace at Williamsburg. "The House of Burgesses has just met. They ordered that a regiment of a thousand men be raised to protect the frontier in addition to those already in the field, and voted £20,000 for the defense of the colony."
"And that is your commission!" I cried. "Is it not so?"
"Yes," he said, scarce less excited than myself. "'Tis my commission as commander-in-chief of all the Virginia forces."
I wrung his hand with joy unutterable. At last this man, who had done so much, was to know something beside disappointment and discouragement.
"But you do not ask how you are concerned in all this," he continued, smiling into my face, "or why I rode over myself to bring the news to you. 'Tis because I set out to-morrow at daybreak for Winchester to take command, and I wish you to go with me, Tom, as aide-de-camp, with the rank of captain."