CHAPTER IX.
THE DREAMS OF GIBBON WAKEFIELD Twin are the gates of sleep: through that of Horn, Swift shadows winged, the shapes of truth are borne.
Fair wrought the Ivory gate gleams white anigh, But false the dreams dark gods despatch thereby.
The founder of the Colony now comes on the scene.

It was time he came.
The Islands were neither to fall into the hands of the French nor remain the happy hunting-ground of promiscuous adventurers.

But the fate which ordained that Edward Gibbon Wakefield should save them from these alternatives interposed in the way of the great colonizer a series of difficulties from which any mind less untiring and resourceful than his must have recoiled.

The hour had come and the man.

Yet few bystanders could have thought either the hour propitious or the man promising.