Godwyn shaded his eyes with his hand. "Yes," he said at last, speaking with energy. "I do believe it! I know it is a desperate game; but the stake! I believe in myself. And I have four hundred able adjutants, men who are to me what his Ironsides were to Oliver, but none—" he stretched out his hand, thin, white, and delicate as a woman's, and laid it upon the brown one resting upon the table. "Lad," he said in a gravely tender voice, "I have none upon this plantation in whom I can put absolute trust. There are few Oliverians here, and they are like Win-Grace Porringer, in whom zeal hath eaten up discretion. Lad, I need a helper! I have spoken to you freely; I have laid my heart before you; and why? Because I, who was and am a gentleman, see in you a gentleman, because I would take your word before all the oaths of all the peasant servants in Virginia, because you have spirit and judgment; because,—in short, because I could love you as I loved your father before you. You have great wrongs. We will right them together. Be my lieutenant, my confidant, my helper! Come! put your hand in mine and say, 'I am with you, Robert Godwyn, heart and soul.'"
Landless sprang to his feet. "It were easy to say that," he said hoarsely, "for, in all the two years I lay rotting in prison, and in these weeks of sordid misery here in Virginia, yours is the only face that has looked kindly upon me, yours the only voice that has told me I was believed.... But it is a fearful thing you propose! If all go as you say it will,—why WELL! but if not, Hell will be in the land. I must have time to think, to judge for myself, to decide—"
The door swung stealthily inward, and in the opening appeared the dead white face, with the great letter sprawling over it, of Master Win-Grace Porringer.
"There are boats on the creek." he said. "Two coming up, one coming down."
Godwyn nodded. "I hold conference to-night with men from this and the two neighboring plantations. You will stay where you are and see and hear them. Only you must be silent; for they must not know that you are not entirely one with us, as I am well assured you will be."
"They are Oliverians?"
"All but two or three."
"I secured the mulatto," interrupted the Muggletonian.
"Ay," said Godwyn, "I thought it well to have one slave representative here to-night. These mulattoes are devils; but they can plot, and they can keep a still tongue. But I shall not trust him or his kind too far."
The peculiar knock—four strokes in all—sounded upon the door, and Porringer went to it. "Who is there?" passed on the one side, and "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon" on the other. The door swung open, and there entered two men of a grave and determined cast of countenance. Both had iron-gray hair, and one was branded upon the forehead with the letter that appeared upon the cheek of the Muggletonian. Again the knock sounded, the countersign was given, and the door opened to admit a pale, ascetic-looking youth, with glittering eyes and a crimson spot on each cheek, who stooped heavily and coughed often. He was followed by another stern-faced Commonwealth's man, and he in turn by a brace of broad-visaged rustics and a smug-faced man, who looked like a small shop-keeper. After an interval came two more Oliverians, grim of eye, and composed in manner.