The young General sat up all night long making his appointments and preparing the commissions, keeping the Burgess from Stafford County, Mr. Mathew, whom he had pressed into service as secretary, up with him. This gentleman made bold to express the fear that as the people he represented dwelt upon the most northern frontier of the colony, their interests might not be so much regarded as those in General Bacon's own neighborhood, on the far southern frontier; but his fears were set to rest by Bacon's assurance that "the like care should be taken of the remotest corners in the land as in his own dwelling house." In the very midst of Nathaniel Bacon's little reign at Jamestown came the news that the Indians, with a boldness exceeding any they had hitherto shown, had swooped down upon two settlements on York River, only twenty-three miles distant from the little capital, and more than forty miles within the bounds of the frontier plantations, and had massacred eight persons. This was upon the morning of the twenty-fifth of June--a Sunday--when the pious Virginians were doubtless rejoicing in a welcome rest from law-making, and, resplendent in apparel fashioned after the latest mode in England at the time when the ships that brought it over sailed thence, were offering thanks in the church for the promise of brighter days which filled their hearts with good hope. The town was again thrown into an uproar. Bacon ordered supplies to be taken to the Falls of James River, and upon Monday morning, bright and early, flags were unfurled, drums and trumpets sounded, and with the authority of the cherished commission as "General of all the forces in Virginia against the Indians," and the God-speed of men, women and children, he marched away at the head of his thousand troops. From the chorus of cheers and prayers for his safety and success that followed him, however, one voice was missing. There was among those that witnessed the departure one who was silver-haired and full of years, but who had grown old ungracefully, for his brilliant and picturesque prime had been eclipsed by a narrow and crabbed old age. While every heart but his was stirred to its depths, every eye but his dimmed by the gentle moisture of emotion, every tongue but his attuned to blessings, Sir William Berkeley was possessed by wrathful silence, resolved to submit as best he could to what he could not help, and to bide his time till the aid from England, which he confidently expected, should arrive. He was in the mean time upon the lookout for any straw that could be caught at to stem the tide of his rival's popularity, and such a straw he soon found.