Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia

The family and guests of Verney Manor were assembled in the great room. The day had been one of confusion, haste and anxiety; but it was past, and the stillness and forced inact...

Landless, recoiling, struck with his shoulder the torch, which fell to the floor. The flame went out, leaving only a red gleaming end. "I will get another," said the mender of n...

The sun had some time passed the meridian when the party saw through the widening glades of the forest the gleam of a great river, and upon its bank an Indian village of perhaps...

The speaker shaded her eyes with a great fan of carved ivory and painted silk. They were beautiful eyes; large, brown, perfect in shape and expression, and set in a lovely, impe...

At Jamestown, twenty miles away, the Assembly had just adjourned after a busy session. A law debarring that "turbulent people" the Quakers from further admittance into the colon...

Four nights later, the hour before midnight found Landless walking steadily through the forest, bound upon a mission which he had had in his mind since the night after the murde...

Great trees, drooping from the banks of the Pamunkey, shadowed into inky blackness the water below them; but between the lines of darkness slept a charmed sheet, glassy, fiery r...

The master of Verney Manor and his guests slept late, for the carouse of the night before had been deep and prolonged. The master's daughter rose with the sun, and went down int...

Out from the forest rushed the remnant of that band which had smoked the peace pipe with the Governor one sunny afternoon on the banks of the Pamunkey. Tall and large of limb, p...

With a cry of terror Patricia seized and clung to Landless's arm, trembling violently, and with her breath coming in long, gasping sobs. Exhausted by the previous terrors of the...

The afternoon sunshine lay hot upon the house and garden of Verney Manor--the leaves drooped motionless, the glare of the white paths hurt the eye, the flowers seemed all to be...

At a long, low table stood Mistress Betty Carrington, her slender figure enveloped in an apron of blue dowlas, her sleeves of fine holland rolled above her elbows, and her white...

Three weeks passed, weeks in which Landless saw the mender of nets some eight times in all, making each visit at night, stealthily and under constant danger of detection. Thrice...

For twenty days they had followed the Ricahecrians. At times the trail lay before them so plain that even Landless's unaccustomed eyes could read it; at times he saw nothing but...

Patricia was ennuyee to the last degree. That morning Sir Charles had ridden to Green Spring with her father; Mistress Lettice was in the still room decocting a face wash from r...

Five days later saw the wayfarers some thirty leagues to the eastward of the hollow in the hills. They had traveled swiftly, sleeping but a few hours of each night and in the da...

It was shortly after midnight when the two servants slipped along the inlet, silently and warily, and keeping their boat well under the shore. It was a crazy affair, barely larg...

She shivered, and Darkeih began to wail aloud. Landless laid a heavy hand upon the latter's shoulder. "Silence!" he said sternly. "Here! I shall lay Regulus' head in your lap, a...

The overseer knocked the ashes from his pipe and stuck it in his belt. "The master," he said curtly, getting to his feet as three cloaked figures, followed by a negro bearing a...

His back and limbs ached from the unaccustomed stooping, the fierce sunshine beat upon his head, the blood pounded behind his temples, his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth,...

Sir Charles was up with the two girls before they reached the garden; and they passed together through the gate and into the spicy wilderness. The dew was falling, and as they s...

Landless turned to the pathway by which they had come, but the Indian shook his head, and pointing to the stream which, making a sudden turn, brawled along at their very feet, s...

As Landless entered the hut Godwyn looked up with a pleased smile from the net he was mending. The two men had not seen each other since the night upon which Landless had been b...

The women crouched in a far corner of the room behind a barricade of chairs and tables; the men stood between them and the thirsters for blood, and fought coolly, desperately, w...

Sir Charles pushed forward the big chair for Patricia, and himself dropped upon a stool at her feet. Taking her fan from her, he began to play with it, lightly commenting on the...

About midnight, Landless, lying upon the dirt floor of the lean-to attached to the one room of the cabin, felt a hand upon his shoulder and opened his eyes upon a shadowy figure...

"No, I will not!" she answered passionately. "Why should you think such a thing of me? See! we have been together, you and I, for long weeks! You have been my faithful guide, my...

The third tobacco house was built upon a point of land jutting into the larger inlet, and screened off from the wide expanse of fields by a belt of cedars. It was a lonely, reti...

At noon the next day returned the search party, dispatched by the Colonel on receipt of his daughter's information, and headed by Woodson and Sir Charles Carew. In their midst,...

The hut of the mender of nets stood upon a narrow isthmus connecting two large tracts of marsh. That to the eastward was partially submerged at high tide; that to the west, bein...

Days passed, and the forest put on a beauty, austere, yet fantastic, bizarre. Above it hung a pale blue sky; within it, a perpetual, pale blue haze, through which blazed the sca...

The Governor rose and began to pace the floor, his head thoughtfully bent, his unwounded hand tugging at the curls of his periwig. "It is not enough," he said at length, pausing...

The trees of the orchard stood out black against a crimson sky. "Faith! it is a color we shall see more of presently," said Laramore, divesting himself of his doublet.

It was early morning, and the mist lay heavy upon the forest and on the bosom of the James. Landless and Patricia raked together the dying embers of their fire and heaped fresh...

That terrible cadence preluded pandemonium, the hush of horror that followed it being broken by one deep and awful roar of voices as the insurgents, red, white, and black, joine...

In an unused attic room of the great house lay Godfrey Landless, cords about his ankles, and his arms bound to his sides by cords and by a thick rope, one end of which was faste...

The rich notes rang higher and higher, filling the languid air, and drowning the trill of the mockingbirds. Patricia, filling her apron with midsummer flowers, sang with a carel...