Produced by Roberta Staehlin, Mark C. Orton, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE CAVALIERS OF VIRGINIA, OR THE RECLUSE OF JAMESTOWN. AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE OLD DOMINION. BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE KENTUCKIAN IN NEW-YORK." IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NO. 82 CLIFF-STREET, AND SOLD BY THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES. 1835. Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1834, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York. THE CAVALIERS OF VIRGINIA. CHAPTER I. The lightning streamed athwart the heavens in quick and vivid flashes. One peal of thunder after another echoed from cliff to cliff, while a driving storm of rain, wind and hail, made the face of nature black and dismal. There was something frightfully congenial in this uproar of the contending elements with the storm raging in Bacon's heart, as he rushed from the scene of the catastrophe we have just witnessed. The darkness which succeeded the lurid and sulphureous flashes was not more complete and unfathomable than the black despair of his own soul. These vivid contrasts of light and gloom were the only stimulants of which he was susceptible, and they were welcomed as the light of his path! By their guidance he wildly rushed to his stable, saddled, led forth, and mounted his noble charger, his own head still uncovered. For once the gallant animal felt himself uncontrolled master of his movements, fleet as the wind his nimble heels measured the narrow limits of the island. A sudden glare of intense light served for an instant to reveal both to horse and rider that they stood upon the brink of the river, and a single indication of the rider's will was followed by a plunge into the troubled waves. Nobly and majestically he rose and sank with the swelling surges. His master sat erect in the saddle and felt his benumbed faculties revived, as he communed with the storm. The raging elements appeared to sympathize with the tumult of his own bosom. He laughed in horrid unison with the gambols of the lightning, and yelled with savage delight as the muttering thunder rolled over his head. There is a sublime stimulus in despair. Bacon felt its power; he was conscious that one of the first laws of our organization, (self-preservation,) was suddenly dead within him.