“I think it attended with great danger,” replied Hansford.
“I had not thought,” returned Bacon, with something between a smile and a sneer, “that Thomas Hansford would have considered the question of peril involved in a contest like this.”
“I am at a loss to understand your meaning,” said Hansford, indignantly. “If you think I regard danger for myself, I tell you that it is a feeling as far a stranger to my bosom as to your own, and this I am ready to maintain. If you meant no offence, I will merely say that it is the part of every general to 'sit down and consider the cost' before engaging in any enterprise.”
“Why will you be so quick to take offence?” said Bacon. “Do I not know that fear is a stranger to your breast?—else why confide in you as I have done? But I spoke not of the danger attending our enterprise. To me danger is not a matter of indifference, it is an object of desire. They who would bathe in a Stygian wave, to render them invulnerable, are not worthy of the name of heroes. It is only the unmailed warrior, whose form, like the white plume of Navarre, is seen where danger is the thickest, that is truly brave and truly great.”
“You are a singular being, Bacon,” said Hansford, with admiration, “and were born to be a hero. But tell me, what is it that you expect or hope for poor Virginia, when all your objects may be attained? She is still but a poor, helpless colony, sapped of her resources by a relentless sovereign, and expected to submit quietly to the oppressions of those who would enslave her.”
“By heavens, no!” cried Bacon, impetuously. “It shall never be. Her voice has been already heard by haughty England, and it shall again be heard in thunder tones. She who yielded not to the call of an imperious dictator—she who proposed terms to Cromwell—will not long bear the insulting oppression of the imbecile Stuarts. The day is coming, and now is, when on this Western continent shall arise a nation, before whose potent sway even Britain shall be forced to bow. Virginia shall be the Rome and England shall be the Troy, and history will record the annals of that haughty and imperious kingdom chiefly because she was the mother of this western Rome. Yes,” he continued, borne along impetuously by his own gushing thoughts, “there shall come a time when Freedom will look westward for her home, and when the oppressed of every nation shall watch with anxious eye that star of Freedom in its onward course, and follow its bright guidance till it stands over the place where Virginia—this young child of Liberty—is; and oh! Hansford, will it then be nothing that we were among those who watched the infant breathings of that political Saviour—who gave it the lessons of wisdom and of virtue, and first taught it to speak and proclaim its mission to the world? Will it then be nothing for future generations to point to our names, and, in the language of pride and gratitude, to cry, there go the authors of our freedom?”
So spake the young enthusiast, thus dimly foreshadowing the glory that was to be—the freedom which, just one hundred years from that eventful period, burst upon the world. He was not permitted, like Simeon of old, to see the salvation for which he longed, and for which he wrought. And yet he helped to plant the germ, which expanded into the wide-spreading tree, and his name should not be forgotten by those who rejoice in its fruit, or rest secure beneath its shade.
Thus whiling away the hours of the night in such engrossing subjects, Hansford had nearly forgotten his sorrows in the visions of the future. How beneficent the Providence which thus enables the mind to receive from without entirely new impressions, which soften down, though they cannot erase, the wounds that a harsh destiny has inflicted.
But it is time that the thread of our narrative was broken, in order to follow the fortunes of an humble, yet worthy character of our story.