The vision of the slave was of supper at the quarters, of the scraping of
the fiddle in the red firelight, of the dancing and the singing. The white
man saw, at first, only a girl's face, shy and innocent,--the face of the
woodland maid who had fired his fancy, who was drawing him through the
wilderness back to the cabin in the valley. But after a while, in the gray
stillness, he lost the face, and suddenly thought, instead, of the stone
that was to cover his father's grave. The ship that was to bring the
great, dark, carven slab should be in by now; the day after his return to
Williamsburgh the stone must be put in place, covering in the green sod
and that which lay below. _Here, lieth in the hope of a joyful
resurrection_--

His mind left the grave in the churchyard at Williamsburgh, and visited
the great plantation of which he was now sole master. There was the house,
foursquare, high-roofed, many-windowed, built of dark red brick that
glowed behind the veil of the walnuts and the oaks. There, too, were the
quarters,--the home quarter, that at the creek, that on the ridge. 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--