I reasoned it out within myself that one cause might lie in that

distrust and suspicion of his neighbour as to his good-will and

identical interest with himself which is inborn with every man, and

in most cases strengthens with his growth. When a movement of

rebellion against authority is on foot, he eyes all askance, and

speaks in whispering corners of secrecy, not knowing when he strikes

his first blow whether his own brother's hand will be with him

against the common tyrant, or against himself.

Were it not for this lamentable quality of the human heart, which

will prevent forever the perfect concerting of power to one end,

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such a giant might be made of one people that it could hold all the

world and all the nations thereof at its beck and call. But that

cannot be, even in England, which had known and knows now and will

know again that division of interest and doubts, every man of his

brother's heart, which weaken the arm against the common foe.

But, reflecting in such wise, I came no nearer to the answer to my

quandary as to my best course for the protection of Mary Cavendish.

I sat there on that rock glittering like frost-work in the May

sunlight and watched the river current until it seemed to me that my

rock and all Virginia were going out on the tide to sea and back to

England, where, had I landed then, I would have lost my head and all

my wondering with it, and my old astonishment, which I had had from

a boy, was upon me, that so many things that be, according to the

apparent evidence of our senses are not, and how can any man ever be

sure that he is on sea or land, or coming or going? And comes there

not to all of us some day a great shock of knowledge of the slipping

past of this world, and all the history thereof which we think of so

much moment, and that we only are that which remains? But then

verily it seemed to me that the matter of the tobacco plot and Mary

Cavendish's danger was of more moment than aught else in the

century.

"Master Wingfield," said a voice so gently and sweetly repellent and

forbidding, even while it entreated, that it shivered the air with

discord, and I looked around, and there stood Catherine Cavendish.

She stood quite near the rock where I sat, but she kept her head

turned slightly away as if she could not bear the sight of my face,

though she was constrained to speak to me. But I, and I speak the

truth, since I held it unworthy a man and a gentleman to feel aught

of wrath or contempt when he was sole sufferer by reason of any

wrong done by a woman, had nothing but that ever recurrent surprise

and unbelief at the sight of her, to reconcile what I knew, or

thought I knew, with what she seemed.




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