should be so tenacious of our liberty as not to invest a power, where interest and policy so unanswerably demand it. . . Do we not know, that every nation under the sun finds its account therein, and that, without it, no order or regularity can be observed? Why then should it be expected from us, who are all young and inexperienced, to govern and keep up a proper spirit of discipline without laws, when the best and most experienced can scarcely do it with them?"
As the winter of 1755–6 approached, the Indian atrocities ceased and for a few months there was quiet. But by early spring the raids were renewed with merciless regularity. Every day brought a new tale of murder and pillage; and very soon every road was filled with fugitives "bringing to Winchester fresh dismay."
With his few men this first hero of Winchester (who by the way was at his post, not "twenty miles away") was again straining every nerve that Virginia might not lose the great stretch of beautiful country west of the Blue Ridge. "The supplicating tears of women and moving
