CHAPTER XXII.
VENGEANCE WITH A VENGEANCE.
The longer life, the more offence; The more offence, the greater pain; The greater pain, the less defence; The less defence, the greater gain: The loss of gain long ill doth try, Wherefore, come death and let me die.
-- WYAT.
Bacon still tarried at the Greenspring manor-house after the destruction of Jamestown, till a messenger came with the alarming intelligence that a strong force of royalists was advancing from the Potomac.
With his little army of dauntless patriots, he marched to face this new danger, for there was little more to fear from Sir William Berkeley, who remained at the kingdom of Accomac, and who would only find smoking ruins at Jamestown.
"You do not look well," said Robert to the patriot at whose side he rode.

"Your cheek is flushed, and I believe you have a fever." Bacon, who had contracted a disease in the trenches about Jamestown, was very irritable.

His excitable nature took fire at the slightest provocation; but with Robert he was ever reasonable.
"I shall be better soon," he answered.

"When once we have met these devils and had this fight over with, I will be well; but I shall free Virginia, or die in the effort." "Have a care for your health." "I shall live to see the tyrant more humbled than when he fled Jamestown." Bacon was angry and more eager to fight as his illness increased than when well.

They crossed the lower York in boats at Ferry Point and marched into Gloucester, where he made his headquarters at Colonel Warner's and issued his "Mandates" to the Gloucester men to meet him at the court house and subscribe to the Middle Plantation oath.