Fifty white servants, three hundred slaves,--and he was the master.

The honeysuckles in the garden that had been his father's pride, the shining expanse of the river, the ship--his ship, the Golden Rose--that was to take him home to England,--he forgot the night and the forest, and saw these things quite plainly.

Then he fell to thinking of London and the sweets that he meant to taste, the heady wine of youth and life that he meant to drain to the lees.

He was young; he could spare the years.

One day he would come back to Virginia, to the dim old garden and quiet house.
His factor would give account, and he would settle down in the red brick house, with the tobacco to the north and east, the corn to the west, and to the south the mighty river,--the river silvered by the moon, the river that lay just beyond him, gleaming through the trees-- Startled by the sudden tightening of the reins, or by the tearing of some frightened thing through the canes that beset the low, miry bank, the horse sprang aside; then stood trembling with pricked ears.