en their old neighbours with
suspicion. Soon they were to be called traitors to their faces and to
know that their lives were in peril, for always those may be found in
times of excitement to seek excuse for wreaking vengeance on enemies,
doing it in the name of the cause that is popular.

When the choleric royal governor, Lord Dunmore, dissolved the House of
Burgesses he accomplished nothing save to increase the bitterness
already existing. The Virginia representatives met and chose delegates
to the General Congress to meet in Philadelphia, and now Virginia was
to have a convention of its own, and hold it at Richmond, then a
village of not more than nine hundred white inhabitants, and there, in
the fire of his eloquence, Patrick Henry was to fuse the differing
views into one grand purpose and arouse the people to the fact that
war was indeed approaching.

Rodney Allison, whose duties, much to his delight, had taken him to
the convention, was one of the spectators of that memorable scene when
Patrick Henry spoke. Ten years before, in the House of Burgesses,
Henry had told the awestruck delegates what he thought of the infamous
Stamp Act, and that, if what he said were treason, they could make the
most of it. Now, he favoured raising volunteer soldiers in each
county, such as the Minute Men who had done such valiant work in
Massachusetts.

The opposition to these resolutions aroused him, and he rose to reply,
and his words seared his views upon the minds of the delegates, who
sat motionless like men in a trance. It seemed to Rodney, when the
last word was spoken, as though he had not breathed from the moment
the orator began. The speaker's face seemed to become luminous and his
eyes blazed and the boy shivered as though with a chill. Certain of
the immortal sentences he never forgot and as they were spoken he saw
them in his excited imagination as though written in letters of fire:
"Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed by a kiss," referring to the
king's promises. "In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond
hope of reconciliation." "There is no longer any room for hope." "The
war is inevitable! and let it come!" "The next gale that sweeps from
the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!" At the
close came those words as from a prophet with a face of flame: "Give
me liberty or give me death!" and when he sat down his listeners were
ready to rise and declare war on the instant.

Not all, f