Among the captives were musicians, including fiddlers, and they always spoke with enthusiasm of the evening concerts at Monticello. Captain Bibby and Mr. Jefferson played duets together; and Bibby used to declare, long afterward, that Jeffer son was the finest amateur performer he ever heard.

CHAPTER XVI

GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA

WHEN Virginia got rid of Lord Dunmore, she placed Patrick Henry in the vacant place; and for three successive terms of a year each he had been Chief Magistrate.

The candidates before the Legislature to succeed Henry were Thomas Jefferson and his old friend, schoolmate, and confidential correspondent John Page, in whose cupola at Rosewell tradition mistakenly says that the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was written.

The contest was purely political; neither candidate took any part in it; Mr. Jefferson was elected by a few votes majority; and manly John Page wrote him a handsome letter of congratulation.

A big-hearted patriot was this rich master of Rosewell, the largest mansion in Virginia. The time was soon to come when the American soldiers would need lead; and then the Hon. John Page was to prove the quality of his patriotism by stripping the leaden roof from his grand house in order that Washington's muskets should not lack bullets. It was on June 1, 1779, that Mr. Jefferson en

tered upon his duties as Governor of Virginia; and his biographer gets the idea that this was one of fice that he afterward regretted having accepted.

Away from the halls where statesmen debate and vote; away from the quiet rooms where laws are changed and peaceful reforms planned; away from hearth and home, from sunny field, and rumbling mill, and busy mart of trade, let us look to the camp where the soldier sleeps, the road along which he marches, the battle wherein he fights. The brain may conceive, and the tongue proclaim, and the pen record; but it is the sword which must transform dreams into facts, declarations into deeds.

We look back through the gathering mists of the years, and we see, as in a dim and distant vi sion, the hurrying events of the great struggle for independence.

We see the dead and dying heroes of Lexington and Concord borne off the field to clean New Eng. land homes; we hear the wails of wives and children as the blood of the martyrs drips upon the floor.

We hear the shouts of fury as the minutemen run to their guns. We see the British scurry along the road back to Boston, dropping, dropping-by the dozens, by the scores, by the hundreds-between two lines of fire.

We see England's army shut up in the city, and held there by militia whose leaders are lawyers, doctors, farmers, mechanics.

We witness the charges of the British regulars against the Yankee militia at Bunker Hill-the two which fail, the third which wins-and we see the unbroken Yankees, out of ammunition, slowly leave a field where the glory of the substantial triumph is theirs.

We see the eager faces at doors and windows as Washington rides by to Cambridge; we see the gleam of his sword, under the great elm, as he takes command of the army.

We see the line of steel drawn about the British in Boston; we watch the fleet as it sails away to Halifax.

The gallant Irishman Richard Montgomery comes down Lake Champlain and takes Montreal. Benedict Arnold rushes to join him with twelve hundred men, through the frozen woods of Maine -an awful, awful march.

They unite, Montgomery and Arnold, and assail Quebec. By the veriest, narrowest chance they fail. A sailor, who had run from his post, as the other British sentries had done, turns back in the driving snow-storm of this last December night of 1775 and touches off a grape-charged cannon. The discharge sweeps away the head of the American column, killing or wounding every man who

marches at the front save Aaron Burr. Montgomery is among the slain.

Day is just dawning, January 1, 1776. Panic sets in; there is no competent man to take the dead leader's place. Burr shouts "Go on! Go on!" but the officers refuse to budge-talk while they should be acting. The British recover from their surprise, return in force, and all is over. The small American force is put to flight.

We see the British fleet come back, and hover about New York. The battle of Long Island is fought; Washington is defeated, and loses a thousand prisoners. He is hemmed in by overwhelming numbers. Can he escape?

Brave Nathan Hale takes his life in his hands and goes into the British lines to gather information for the desperately situated Americans. A Tory relative knows him through his disguise, and denounces him as a spy. "I regret only that I have but one life to give to my country," says the hero as he goes to his death.

The British general is the slowest of mortals, and, withal, a good Whig. Sydney George Fisher and others suspect that Howe did not really wish to be too hard on Washington.

Not conscious of this premeditated lenity, Washington is most anxious for his army, and on the first foggy night he slips away.

The negro whom the Tory woman sent, during