With swimming eyes the lovers pursued their way across the narrow peninsula. Virginia sobbed aloud, until she had given vent to her overcharged heart. But an easy and gentle palfrey, and a devoted and obsequious lover, do not often fail to revive a lady's spirits, especially through such scenes as she now beheld, bathed as they were in the mellow glories of a summer twilight. "Hope told a flattering tale," and our hero and heroine would have been more or less than mortal, and wise beyond their years, had they not listened to it. Their laughter was not loud and joyous, it is true, they were far too happy for that; their frames trembled with the exquisite pleasure which words warm from and to the heart produced. Sometimes they were silent indeed, but not for want of thoughts to interchange. Words had exhausted their power.
They had not proceeded many miles on their way, and the sun still hung as it were suspended beyond the purple glories of the horizon, when Bacon pointed with his riding whip to an object before them which quickly changed the current of his companion's thoughts. Like human life, their short journey seemed destined to exhibit many dark and gloomy shadows. It was the Recluse; he was leaning against a tree, apparently waiting their approach, for as they rode up, he stepped out into the highway and saluted them. Virginia trembled upon her saddle with very different sensations from those to which we have just alluded, but her lover hastily unfolded to her his name and former delusion. "This, my young friends," said the Recluse, "is our last meeting on earth—and I have sought it that I might bless you both, before my departure from the land in which I have so long been a sojourner and an exile from the haunts of men."
"Whither are you going?" asked Bacon in astonishment. "You certainly will not leave us, now that the very time has arrived when you may dwell here in safety. I had even calculated upon having you as an inmate at my house."
"It cannot be," replied the Recluse. "My destiny calls me to a place far north of this, where some of my old comrades and now fellow sufferers, dwell in comparative peace and security. But it is only detaining you after night fall, to multiply words. May God of his infinite mercy bless and preserve you both," and thus speaking he also departed, and was seen no more.[15]
On a certain evening, not very long after the one just spoken of, General Bacon was married to Miss Virginia Fairfax, and at the same time and place Charles Dudley, Esq. led to the altar Miss Harriet Harrison.
After this happy announcement, it becomes our painful duty to cast a melancholy blemish upon the character of one who has figured in our narrative. On the two several occasions, namely, of his release from captivity by the storming and capture of Jamestown, and his master's marriage, Brian O'Reily was found hopelessly, helplessly drunk; or according to his own explanation, in that state in which a man feels upward for the earth.