e
would go, he would himself pursue the savages and rescue his relatives.

"You will have aid," assured Mr. Drummond. "The people are enraged at
the carelessness of the governor, and if they can secure a leader, they
will go and punish the Indians."

"Leader or no leader, I shall go to the rescue of my relatives. My
father's sister and children are captives; think you I would remain at
home for lack of a leader?"

"We will find one in Nathaniel Bacon."

"Who is he?" asked Robert, as if he still feared the willingness or
ability of the proposed leader to conduct the crusade against the
savages. Mr. Drummond answered:

"Bacon is a young man who has not yet arrived at thirty years. His
family belongs to the English gentry, for he is a cousin of Lord
Culpepper and married a daughter of Sir John Duke. He run out his
patrimony in England and hath, by his liberality, exhausted the most of
what he brought to Virginia. He came here four years ago and settled at
Curies on the upper James River. His uncle, who lives in Virginia, was a
member of the king's council. He is Nathaniel Bacon, senior, a very rich
politic man and childless, who designs his nephew, Nathaniel Bacon,
junior, for his heir."

"Has he ability for a leader?" asked Robert.

"He hath; his abilities have been so highly recognized, that he was
appointed soon after his arrival to a place in the council."

This was a position of great dignity, rarely conferred upon any but men
of matured age and large estate, and Bacon was only twenty-eight, and
his estate small. His personal character is seen on the face of his
public career. He was impulsive and subject to fits of passion, or, as
the old writers say, "of a precipitate disposition."

Bacon came near being the Virginia Cromwell. Though he never wholly
redeemed his adopted country from tyranny, he put the miscreant Berkeley
to flight. On that May night in 1676, Bacon was at his Curles
plantation, just below the old city of Henricus, living quietly on his
estate with his beautiful young wife Elizabeth. He had another estate in
what is now the suburbs of the present city of Richmond, which is to-day
known as "Bacon's Quarter Branch." His servants and overseers lived
here, and he could easily go thither in a morning's journey on his
favorite dapple gray, or by rowing seven miles around the Dutch Gap
peninsula, could make the journey in his barge. When not at his upper
plantation or in attendance at the council,