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V

A BARREL OF GUNPOWDER

carcely was Jefferson home from signing the Declaration when back from Kentucky came little William's tall strong brother, George Rogers Clark, elected by those far-away settlers, in June of 1776, to represent them in the assembly of Virginia.

Cut by a thousand briars, with ragged clothes and blistered feet, Clark looked in at the home in Caroline and hurried on to Williamsburg.

"The Assembly adjourned? Then I must to the Governor. Before the Assembly meets again I may effect what I wish."

Patrick Henry was lying sick at his country-home in Hanover when the young envoy from Kentucky was ushered to his bedside. Pushing his reading spectacles up into his brown wig, the Governor listened keenly as the young man strode up and down his bed-chamber.

The scintillant brown eyes flashed. "Your cause is good. I will give you a letter to the Council."

"Five hundredweight of gunpowder!" The Council lifted their eyebrows when Clark brought in his request.

"Virginia is straining every nerve to help Washington; how can she be expected to waste gunpowder on Kentucky?"

"Let us move those settlers back to Virginia at the public expense," suggested one, "and so save the sum that it would take to defend them in so remote a frontier."

"Move Boone and Kenton and Logan back?" Clark laughed. Too well he knew the tenacity of that border germ. "So remote a frontier? It is your own back door. The people of Kentucky may be exterminated for the want of this gunpowder which I at such hazard have sought for their relief. Then what bulwark will you