Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857,

BY GEORGE M. WEST,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Virginia.

PREFACE.

It is the design of the author, in the following pages, to illustrate the period of our colonial history, to which the story relates, and to show that this early struggle for freedom was the morning harbinger of that blessed light which has since shone more and more unto the perfect day.

Most of the characters introduced have their existence in real history-Hansford lived, acted and died in the manner here narrated, and a heart as pure and true as Virginia Temple's mourned his early doom.

In one of those quaint old tracts, which the indefatigable antiquary, Peter Force, has rescued from oblivion, it is stated that Thomas Hansford, although a son of Mars, did sometimes worship at the shrine of Venus. It was his unwillingness to separate forever from the object of his love that led to his arrest, while lurking near her residence in Gloucester. From the meagre materials furnished by history of the celebrated rebellion of Nathaniel Bacon the following story has been woven.

It were an object to be desired, both to author and to reader, that the fate of Thomas Hansford had been different. This could not be but by a direct violation of history. Yet the lesson taught in this simple story, it is hoped, is not without its uses to humanity. Though

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