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"Nonsense," said the Virginian, "how could it float against the stream, and as for the shots you think you heard, you most have taken Ephraim Giles's axe blows for them. Besides, you couldn't hear shots at that distance. If you did, it most be from some of the hunters." "But the cry, corporal," urged Jackson, "what say you to the cry Green says he heard when you left us?"
There was, indeed, one great planter with whom young Marshall was thrown into occasional contact, and that was his father's patron and patron saint, Washington. The appeal made to the lad's imagination by the great Virginian, was deep and abiding. And it goes without saying that the horizons suggested by the fame of Fort Venango and Fort Duquesne were not those of seaboard Virginia but of America.
And so now, h'yar's my fo'-paw, in token thar's no two ways about me, Ralph Stackpole, a hoss to my friends, and a niggur to them that sarves me!" With these words, the two associates, equally zealous in the cause in which they had embarked, parted, each to achieve his own particular share of the adventure, in which they had left so little to be done by the young Virginian.
His services at the siege of Norfolk, the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth, and his share in the rigors of Valley Forge and in the capture of Stony Point, made him an American before he had ever had time to become a Virginian.
The two or three young women Oldfields and Porters of the Virginian stage who were under indentures to her husband and herself found her as much their friend as mistress. Their triumphs in the petty playhouse of this town of a thousand souls were hers, and what woes they had came quickly to her ears.
"Tyler is a political sectarian, of the slave-driving, Virginian, Jeffersonian school; principled against all improvement; with all the interests and passions and vices of slavery rooted in his moral and political constitution; with talents not above mediocrity, and a spirit incapable of expansion to the dimensions of the station on which he has been cast by the hand of Providence, unseen, through the apparent agency of chance.
This act, extreme even in those days of British cruelty, doubtless nerved him to incredible deeds of bravery in fighting the hated redcoats. Shortly after this, he became a private in the militia. He made his mark when the French and Indians attacked a fort near Winchester. The story is that he killed four savages in as many minutes. The young Virginian never drove any more army wagons.
But from the day the Virginian girl crossed his path, Bob Brownley was a man who was thinking, thinking, thinking all the time. It was only with an effort that he would keep his eyes on whomever he was talking with long enough to take in what was said, and if the saying occupied much time it would be apparent to the talker that Bob was off in the clouds.
Warrington," says he, "you ought to be taken to Exeter 'Change, and put in a show." "And for why?" "A gentleman from Virginia who has lost his elder brother and absolutely regrets him. The breed ain't known in this country. Upon my honour and conscience, I believe that you would like to have him back again." "Believe!" cries the Virginian, growing red in the face.
And any rudeness would have lost him the battle. But the Virginian was not the man to lose such a battle in such a way. His shaft had hit. She thought he referred to those babies about whom last night she had shown such superfluous solicitude. Her conscience was guilty. This was all that he had wished to make sure of before he began operations.
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