By the opening of the year 1861 there was no longer doubt of what these people meant to do; but they thought and acted slowly, and they were long in doing what they had resolved from the beginning to do. Early in February a call had been issued for a convention to meet at Richmond to determine the destiny of Virginia. Richard Tremaine announced his candidacy for the honor of representing his county in this convention. He was so young, being barely twenty-seven years of age, that if he should get the suffrages of the people he would certainly be the youngest man in the whole assembly to which he aspired. His claims, however, put forward as they were with modesty and dignity, were received with favor. Richard Tremaine, himself, with the self-command of a well-balanced mind, was able to disguise the gratification he felt at the prospect before him. Not so his womenkind or Colonel Tremaine, who was never tired of quoting the triumphs of William Pitt and Henry Clay at Richard’s age and confidently predicted these triumphs would be paralleled in Richard’s case. Lyddon would not have been surprised at any great thing which Richard Tremaine might achieve either in public life or in war. Richard had fully made up his mind, even if he should be elected to the convention, he would resign as soon as decisive action was taken and enter the military service of the Confederacy. He had already begun the study of strategy and tactics and especially of artillery. Lyddon, helping and admiring, could only compare Richard’s mind to a beacon light moving upon a pivot which illuminated every object upon which it was concentrated. Never had Lyddon in all his life before lived so strenuous an intellectual life as from the Christmas of 1860 until the February day when he rode with Richard Tremaine from one polling place to another in the county only to feel assured long before the votes were counted that Richard Tremaine had triumphed over men of twice his age and twenty times his actual experience. Lyddon, however, had no distrust of young men and particularly in the great coming crisis when the theory of the government of the people was to be put upon trial. He thought it the time for men in the full flush of energy and with the splendid philosophy of youth to come to the front.