However, before the night fairly fell, twenty of the prisoners, upon giving assurance of penitence, were discharged, and but two, the ringleaders, were committed and were in the prison. The twenty-two, being somewhat craven-hearted, and some of them indisposed by wounds, were on their ways homeward when we were afield. We waited for the moon to be up, which was an hour later that night. I was all equipped in good season, and was stealing forth secretly, lest any see me, for I wished not to alarm the household, nor if possible to have any one aware of what I was about to do, that they might be acquit of blame through ignorance, when I was met in the threshold of an unused door by Mary Cavendish. And here will I say, while marvelling at it greatly, that the excitement of a great cause, which calls for all the enthusiasm and bravery of a man, doth, while it not for one moment alters the truth and constancy of his love, yet allay for the time his selfish thirst for it. While I was ready as ever to die for Mary Cavendish, and while the thought of her was as ever in my inmost soul, yet that effervescence of warlike spirit within me had rendered me not forgetful, but somewhat unwatchful of a word and a look of hers. And for the time being that sad question of our estates, which forbade more than our loves, had seemed to pale in importance before this matter of maybe the rising or falling of a new empire. Heart and soul was I in this cause, and gave myself the rein as I had longed to do for the cause of Nathaniel Bacon. But Mary met me at the northern door, which opened directly on a locust thicket and was little used, and stood before me with her beautiful face as white as a lily but a brave light in her eyes. "Where go you, Harry?" she whispered. Then I, not knowing her fully, and fearing lest I disquiet her, answered evasively somewhat about hunting and Sir Humphrey. Some reply of that tenor was necessary, as I was, beside my knife for the tobacco cutting, armed to the teeth and booted to my middle. But there was no deceiving Mary Cavendish. She seized both my hands, and I trow for the minute, in that brave maiden soul of hers, the selfishness of our love passed as well as with me. "I pray thee, Harry, cut down the tobacco on Laurel Creek first," she whispered, "as I would, were I a man. Oh! I would I were a man! Harry, promise me that thou wilt cut down first the tobacco on my plantation of Laurel Creek." But I had made up my mind to touch neither that nor the tobacco on Drake Hill, lest in some way the women of the Cavendish family be implicated. "There be enough, and more than enough, for to-night," I answered, and would have passed, but she would not let me. "Harry," she cried, so loud that I feared for listening ears, "if you cut not down my tobacco, then will I myself! Harry, promise me!"