The Light That Lures | Page 2

battle of Brandywine against an enemy far superior in numbers had
failed; yet a month later a large British force had been compelled to
surrender at Saratoga. These fighters for freedom seemed to know
defeat only as a foundation upon which to build victory. England might
send fresh armies and fresh fleets, but there were men on land and sea

ready to oppose them, ready to die for the freedom they desired and the
independence they had proclaimed; and it was only a few months ago
that the war had been virtually ended by the surrender of Lord
Cornwallis at Yorktown.
Colonel Barrington had taken an active and honorable part in the
conflict, yet in the beginning of the trouble, like many another man of
his class, he had been for peace, for arbitration, for arrangement if
possible. His fathers had been among the earliest settlers in Virginia,
representatives of an English family, whose roots stretched far back
into history. They had come to rest on this very spot of earth, had raised
their first rough wooden dwelling here, calling it Broadmead, after the
name of their home in England. Love for the old country was still alive
in Colonel Barrington, and it was only after grave deliberation that he
had drawn the sword, convinced that he drew it for the right. Doubtless
there were some in this great conflict who were self-seeking, but this
was certainly not the case with Henry Barrington. He had much to lose,
nothing personal to win which seemed to him of any consequence.
Broadmead he loved. He had been born there. In due time he had
brought home to it his beautiful young wife, daughter of a French
family in Louisiana, and until this upheaval the years had passed
happily, almost uneventfully, yet bringing with them increasing
prosperity.
The boy, dreaming dreams and stretching out toward an ideal, might
well have taken his father for model, but, while reverencing him and
knowing him to be a great and good man, his young imagination had
been fired by a different type of hero, the man whose restless and
adventurous spirit had brought him four years ago to fight as a
volunteer in the cause of freedom; who had come again only a year
since and had done much to bring about the surrender of Lord
Cornwallis; the man who, only the other day, had been publicly
thanked by General Washington speaking for the nation he had helped
to found; the man who was at this moment his father's guest--the
Marquis de Lafayette. There was much of the French spirit in the boy,
inherited from his mother, and to every word the Marquis had uttered
he had listened eagerly, painting his hero in colors that were too bright

and too many, perhaps. An hour ago he had stolen out of the house to
this hummock, a favorite spot of his, to dream over all he had heard and
of the future.
His eyes were fixed upon a distant white sail, sun touched, which
lessened far out across the bay, which presently became a point of light
and was then hidden in the haze of the horizon. That was the way of
dreams surely, the road which led to the realization of hope. That ship
might go on and on through sunlight and storm, through mist and clear
weather, and some time, how long a time the boy did not know, it
would reach another land, France perchance, surely the best of all lands,
since it bred such men as the Marquis de Lafayette.
"Dreaming, Richard?"
The grass had deadened the sound of approaching footsteps and the boy
rose hastily. His face flushed as he recognized his visitor.
He was a thin man, still young, with an earnest face which at once
arrested attention. It was far more that of a visionary than was the boy's,
a difficult countenance to read and understand. If, for a moment, the
neatness and precision of his dress suggested a man of idle leisure, a
courtier and little more, there quickly followed a conviction that such
an estimate of his character was a wrong one. Dreamer he might be, in
a sense, but he was also a man of action. The spare frame was full of
energy, there was determination in the face. This was a man who knew
nothing of fear, whom danger would only bring stronger courage; a
man who would press forward to his goal undaunted by whatever
difficulties stood in the way. He was an idealist rather than a dreamer,
one who had set up a standard in his life and, right or wrong, would
live his life true to that standard. He was a man to trust, even though he
might not inspire love, a leader for a