muddy Tidewater but a thing of little rivalries and petty wrangles and
moping over paper? The hearth will soon grow cold, and the bright eyes
of the fairest woman will dull with age, and the years will find you
heavy and slow, with a coward's shrinking from death. What say you,
brother? While the blood is strong in the veins shall we ride westward
on the path of a king?"

His eyes were staring like a hawk's over the hills, and, light-headed
as I was, I caught the infection of his ardour. For, remember, I was so
low in spirit that all my hopes and memories were forgotten, and I was
in that blank apathy which is mastered by another's passion. For a
little the life of Virginia seemed unspeakably barren, and I quickened
at the wild vista which Shalah offered. I might be a king over a proud
people, carving a fair kingdom out of the wilderness, and ruling it
justly in the fear of God. These western Indians were the stuff of a
great nation. I, Andrew Garvald, might yet find that empire of which
the old adventurers dreamed.

With shame I set down my boyish folly. It did not last, long, for to my
dizzy brain there came the air which Elspeth had sung, that song of
Montrose's which had been, as it were, the star of all my wanderings.

"For, if Confusion have a part,
Which virtuous souls abhor--"

Surely it was confusion that had now overtaken me. Elspeth's clear
voice, her dark, kind eyes, her young and joyous grace, filled again my
memory. Was not such a lady better than any savage kingdom? Was not the
service of my own folk nobler than any principate among strangers?
Could the rivers of Damascus vie with the waters of Israel?