of their natural rights, should declare for a system of government and
laws more liberal and equitable in their character and operation. At all
events, and be the cause of difference what it might, when the storm of
the Revolution burst over the land, the brothers were found arrayed on
opposite sides--the two younger, the fathers of Roland and Edith,
instantly taking up arms in the popular cause, while nothing, perhaps,
but helpless feebleness and bodily infirmities, the results of wounds
received in Braddock's war, throughout which he had fought at the head of
a battalion of "Buckskins," or Virginia Rangers, prevented the elder
brother from arming as zealously in the cause of his king. Fierce,
uncompromising, and vindictive, however, in his temper, he never forgave
his brothers the bold and active part they both took in the contest; and
it was his resentment, perhaps, more than natural affection for his
neglected offspring, that caused him to defeat his brothers' hopes of
succession to his estates, (he being himself unmarried), by executing a
will in favour of an illegitimate child, an infant daughter, whom he drew
from concealment and acknowledged as his offspring. This child, however,
was soon removed, having being burned to death in the house of its
foster-mother. But its decease effected little or no change in his
feelings towards his brothers, who, pursuing the principles they had so
early avowed, were among the first to take arms among the patriots of
Virginia, and fell, as Roland had said, at Norfolk, leaving each an
orphan child--Roland, then a youth of fifteen, and Edith, a child of ten,
to the mercy of the elder brother. Their death effected what perhaps
their prayers never would have done. The stern loyalist took the orphans
to his bosom, cherished and loved them, or at least appeared to do so,
and often avowed his intention to make them his heirs. But it was
Roland's ill fate to provoke his ire, as Roland's father had done before
him. The death of that father, one of the earliest martyrs to liberty,
had created in his youthful mind a strong abhorrence of everything