J ROMAN CES * 
 
 C OLONIAL i 
 DAYS m 
 
 GEKALDINE BR.OOKS
 
 IRENE DWEN PACE
 
 putlbtng an &tr*fnp 
 Jfox Jfarm 
 
 By JAMES OTIS, author of "The Aeroplane at 
 Silver Fox Farm," "Boy Scouts in the Maine 
 \Yoods," etc. Illustrated. 8vo, cloth. $1.50. 
 
 The three boys who are most active in Mr. 
 Otis s fascinating Silver Fox Farm stories are 
 of the sort whose enthusi 
 asm, once aroused, remains 
 undampened by any number 
 of setbacks. In the present 
 book these energetic young 
 men, encouraged by their 
 distinguished success in 
 aeroplane-building, go in 
 for a full-fledged airship. 
 The leader and chief sup 
 porter of the enterprise is 
 the ingenious millionaire of 
 a mechanical turn. Mr. Sawtelle. who posts the 
 boys, and incidentally the reader, on the correct 
 method of constructing a dirigible air-cruiser. 
 During the course of one summer, with the help 
 of a crew of skilled workmen imported from 
 Boston, the Silver Fox Farmers put together an 
 airship warranted to carry passengers wherever 
 their desires direct, and a voyage is in immediate 
 prospect as the book ends. 
 
 l"n fortunately for the steady progress of the 
 future voyagers of the air. the old smuggler, John 
 Fd Bingham. is allowed to get within hailing dis 
 tance, but no permanent damage results from his 
 revengeful acts. The story is full of interest, as a 
 good, honest boys book should be, and will add to 
 its author s wide popularity among juvenile 
 readers. 
 
 Cfjomas |5. Crotoell Company, .fleto Sork
 
 ROMANCES OF 
 COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 By Geraldine Brooks 
 
 Author of " Dames and Daughters of Colonial 
 Days 1 and "Dames and Daughters of Young 
 Republic " 
 
 Thomas Y. Crowell 
 Company, Publishers
 
 Copyright, 1903, by 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
 
 TO 
 
 THE HAPPIEST MODERN ROMANCE I HAVE KNOWN 
 
 . anfc JE. 1b. D. 
 
 THESE ROMANCES OF COLONIAL DATS 
 
 ARE AFFECTIONATELY 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 20401 80
 
 PEEFAOE. 
 
 ONCE a poet with the gold of fact and the 
 alloy of his own fancy fashioned a poem 
 which he called a "Ring." In writing these 
 44 Romances of Colonial Days " I have endeavored 
 to keep the poet s " Ring " always in mind, to 
 make them rings of romance in which gold and 
 alloy each has its part. Musty old records, letters, 
 and diaries of men and women long since dead 
 have furnished me my gold; and it is surprising 
 how much of gold, facts still breathing the life, 
 the love, the joys and sorrows of a bygone day, lies 
 hidden in these dry-looking mines of history. 
 
 In many of the " Romances " the gold has very 
 nearly shaped itself into a ring, requiring little 
 help from the alloy of fancy; not only do the 
 characters of these " Romances " live and love, joy 
 and sorrow according to historic fact, they even 
 speak according to historic fact. In other of the 
 "Romances" there is less of gold and more of 
 
 iii
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 alloy. But in all of the " Romances " some gold 
 is visible for him who seeks to find it. 
 
 It has been my wish by blending gold and alloy, 
 fact and fancy, to fashion rings of romance that 
 shall make real to us, near and dear to us, the 
 heroes and heroines of colonial romance, the atmos 
 phere they breathed, the time in which they lived. 
 That time, that atmosphere, those heroes and hero 
 ines are not so far removed but that we should feel 
 their kinship; and it is with the hope that this 
 kinship may be realized that I offer these "Ro 
 mances of Colonial Days." 
 
 G. B. 
 
 SOMERVILLE, MASS., September, 1902.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. IN MAYFLOWER TIME (1621) 1 
 
 II. BESIDE THE WATER-GATE (1690) 29 
 
 III. THE SECRET OF THE TREES (1735) 39 
 
 IV. A CROWN THAT STUNG (1744) 61 
 
 V. THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER (1751) . . 82 
 
 VI. THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR (1760) .... 96 
 
 VII. THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART (1773) ... 108 
 
 VIII. A STRAIN FROM THE MISCIIIANZA (1778) . . . 130 
 
 IX. IN THE AMBASSADOR S GAKDEN (1785) .... 151
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Drawings by Arthur E. Becker 
 
 PAOB 
 
 JOHH ALDEN AND PRISCILLA Frontispiece 
 
 " GOOD DAT TO You, BELLE MARIE " 25 
 
 " EVELTN, I WONDER IF YOU WILL EVER LOVE "... 54 
 THUS THE TRAGIC BATTLE OF HER YOUNG LIFE WAS 
 
 FOUGHT 73 
 
 SHE DID NOT TAKE THE BRIDEGROOM S ARM .... 93 
 THE GOVERNOR PROVED A MOST APPRECIATIVE AUDIENCE, 106 
 SALLY BEGAN RUNNING HER FINGERS GENTLY OVER THE 
 
 KEYS 123 
 
 " YOU ARE THINKING ME VERY SlLLY, CAPTAIN ANDRE," 146 
 
 " You FIND ME A HARD CONQUEST, SIR KNIGHT " . . 180
 
 ROMANCES OF COLONIAL 
 DAYS. 
 
 i. 
 
 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 ALL day the labor of corn planting had gone on 
 in the fields. John Alden, with the other able- 
 bodied men of the colony, had been toilsomely, 
 wearyingly employed at hoeing and at catching 
 ells, at fetching corn and stowing corn and ells 
 together in the freshly ploughed hummocks of 
 earth, planting as Squanto the Indian had directed, 
 after the manner of the Indians of Patuxet, orig 
 inal tillers of the soil. Now, at the sunset hour, 
 he sat on the doorstep of his and the Captain s 
 house, the house that he and the Captain them 
 selves had builded, with walls of stout log, a 
 roof of thatch, a chimney of sticks and clay, and 
 windows in which oiled paper served for glass. 
 Not yet even at the sunset hour was his day s 
 work ended. The wash tubs of the colony were 
 about him and he was overhauling them, examin-
 
 2 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 ing their hoops and mending them where they 
 needed, gainst the colony s next washing day; 
 for having been cooper by trade in old England, 
 he had not ceased to be cooper in New England, 
 though now his coopering was but a pastime in a 
 manifoldly busy life. 
 
 His friend and patron, Miles Standish, the Cap 
 tain, sat on a bench in the doorway of their rude 
 home smoking his pipe and quietly enjoying the 
 view outspread before them. It was a fair view, 
 that upon which their cabin looked; the street 
 with the other of the seven houses of Plymouth 
 stretching down to the beach, then the long sweep 
 of sand with the massy headlands at either end, 
 beyond, the bay flushed with the bright yellow 
 light of sunset, and the green heights of Manomet 
 lifting in the distance. 
 
 Presently John Alden raised his head from his 
 work, tossed aside the last tub, and putting back 
 his tousle of tawny hair from his forehead, filling 
 his broad chest with a long, invigorating breath, 
 and folding his hands in restful fashion behind his 
 head, gazed off to that same view which the Cap 
 tain was still quietly enjoying. 
 
 Immediately his attention was caught by a group 
 of girls wandering along the beach, gathering sea 
 weed as they went. The girls were approaching 
 the headland at one end of the beach, and as they 
 came to it several of them essayed to climb it, but 
 all failed until one, a slight, lithe figure, with a.
 
 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 3 
 
 quick spring and scramble scaled it and stood on 
 its summit, waving her hands with triumphant ges 
 ture to the girls below. 
 
 Just over Alden s shoulder a low laugh of 
 approval sounded. " Well done," ejaculated the 
 Captain. " Canst make out who she is, Johnny? " 
 
 "Mistress Priscilla Mullins, if I mistake not," 
 answered Alden, with a positive look that belied 
 the uncertainty of his tone. " She hath ever made 
 it a ground for quarrel with Mistress Mary Chilton 
 that Mary, not she, was the first to spring ashore 
 from the Mayflower. Perchance now she will 
 be more forgiving, since she alone of all the maids 
 hath scaled the bluff." A light had come into the 
 young man s face as he spoke and he kept his eyes 
 fixed steadfastly upon the slight, lithe figure sil 
 houetted against the sky. 
 
 The other girls went on up from the shore, but 
 Priscilla lingered behind a moment. Alden fan 
 cied he could guess her thoughts as she stood 
 there. She was facing the harbor and he knew 
 she must be looking at the old anchoring ground, 
 where once a dark familiar hulk had stood. It 
 was not many days ago that the colonists, a silent, 
 sorrowful band of Pilgrims, lesser by half their 
 number than those who had sailed in the " May 
 flower," had gathered on the shore and watched, 
 through a blur of tears, the ship hoist sail, glide 
 away to the offing, and drop, a white, sunlit speck, 
 over the horizon. And now, Alden divined, Pris-
 
 4 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 cilia was missing the " Mayflower," that last link 
 with the past and home, and the dear memories 
 associated with home ; the vacant anchoring ground 
 was reminding her of all that she had lost, and she 
 was thinking of her father and mother and brother, 
 and the family s trusted servant, whose graves 
 were behind her on the hillside. Alden s heart 
 went out to her in her loneliness and desolation 
 with a great, self-forgetting love. 
 
 He was at length recalled to himself and his 
 surroundings by the dawning consciousness of 
 another s gaze, and glancing up to where the Cap 
 tain sat, he met the Captain s eyes fixed intently 
 upon him. Something in those eyes, a light that 
 was at once accusing and sympathetically under 
 standing, made Alden look away, and as he did so, 
 the color slowly mounting to his cheek glowed 
 beneath its dark tan, telling tales upon his heart. 
 
 At sight of the tell-tale color the Captain left 
 his seat, and coming down the step stood before 
 the young man, his short, stocky, military figure 
 opposing the other s view, peremptorily demand 
 ing entire and immediate attention. 
 
 " Johnny," he declared in a queer voice, half 
 fierce, half tender, " this dumb show of ours has 
 been going on long enough. T is time I stopped 
 playing the master and you the page. Speak out, 
 boy, tell me that you love the maiden." 
 
 But Alden s eyes, eyes that had ever in their 
 clear, blue depths a faithfulness like that of a
 
 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 5 
 
 dog s, were fixed at a range no higher than the 
 tops of the Captain s boots, and his mouth re 
 mained shut with an unwonted stubbornness that 
 intensified the usual firmness of its lines. 
 
 The Captain made a quick gesture of impatience. 
 " Nay, then," he exclaimed, " if you will not speak, 
 let your silence speak for you. I say that you love 
 Mistress Priscilla Mullins. Canst deny it ? " 
 
 It was impossible to elude the little Captain s 
 fiery glance for long. Alden met it at last with 
 a look of appeal and protest. " Spare me, dear 
 friend," he cried. " I meant not to offend or 
 anger you. T is my misfortune, not my fault, that 
 I love where you love. I had hoped to hide my 
 love from you, deeming it an insult to our friend 
 ship. But you have forced a confession of it from 
 me. And now, what can I do to justify myself in 
 your eyes ? I am at your mercy, dear friend, dear 
 patron." 
 
 A puzzled, self-accusing frown darkened the 
 Captain s brow. " Am I in very truth a tyrant ? " 
 he inquired gruffly, soliloquizingly; and after a 
 short pause, " I will be a tyrant no longer. I will 
 not stand between you and the maiden. Go to 
 her. Tell her you love her." He was mounting 
 the step as he spoke and was about to enter the 
 house and briefly, as was his fashion, to terminate 
 the interview. From the doorway of the house 
 he looked back affectionately, yet indignantly, at 
 Alden. " No doubt you will be more successful
 
 6 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 for yourself than yon were for me," he added, with 
 a touch of bitterness in his tone. " You with 
 your Apollo locks and gospel face should find your 
 way easily to the maiden s heart," and he turned 
 to go into the house. 
 
 But Alden was on his feet in an instant, love 
 for the Captain and a proud resentment of the 
 Captain s tone kindling into a Haze his usually 
 tranquil face. " Captain Standish," he called after 
 the retreating figure in an authoritative voice that 
 became him strangely and arrested the Captain on 
 the threshold, "hear me before you leave me. 
 Understand, I will not go to the maiden and talk 
 to her of love. For you I have failed. For my 
 self I will not speak." He was beside the Captain, 
 his hand extended, his face still aglow and smiling 
 bravely. "Now will you take my hand?" he 
 inquired. 
 
 Touched by the young man s words and even 
 more by his voice and manner, the Captain s in 
 dignation and bitterness left him. He was all 
 friendliness, a friendliness that took the form of a 
 playful severity. He put out one hand to meet 
 Alden s and laid the other hand affectionately 
 upon the young man s shoulder. 
 
 " Johnny, thou art an obstinate lad," he said. 
 " If you would please me, do as I bid you. Go 
 tell the maiden that you love her. To woo her is 
 your right, not mine ; for t is you, not I, who love 
 Priscilla. Your face and my own heart tell me so.
 
 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 7 
 
 Only once in our lives is it given us to love 
 deeply. For you that once is Priscilla. For me " 
 his playful severity vanished and he glanced 
 sadly toward the hillside where was the Pilgrims 
 burying-ground " for me that once was Rose." 
 He ended in softened voice. Then after a pause, 
 looking back into Alden s face with a return of 
 his playful severity, he queried, " Dost understand 
 me, boy?" 
 
 And Alden understood. As clearly as though 
 it had been written he read the story of the Cap 
 tain s second wooing. Sympathy and tenderness 
 for Priscilla in her lonely state, not love, he plainly 
 saw had prompted the Captain to make his suit 
 to her. He had wondered when the Captain 
 appointed him his envoy that a man could send 
 another to do his wooing for him. And he had 
 wondered, too, at the manner, one more of wounded 
 pride than of disappointed love, in which the Cap 
 tain had received the maid s refusal and had re 
 garded him, his envoy, upon suspicion of his love 
 for the maiden. He had wondered at all this, but 
 now he wondered no longer. The Captain did not 
 love, had never loved Priscilla. It was the memory 
 of Rose he loved, of sweet, fragile Mistress Stan- 
 dish, dearly remembered of all who had sailed in 
 the " Mayflower," whose grave was one of those so 
 sadly planted on the hillside close by. 
 
 With a look of infinite sympathy and affection, 
 and with a new gladness at his heart, Alden an-
 
 8 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 swered the Captain : " Yes, I understand, dear 
 friend." 
 
 Nodding his satisfaction, the Captain drew away 
 his hand. "Well, then, sir, go," he commanded 
 shortly; and retreating through the doorway, he 
 called back in smiling raillery, " My compliments 
 to the maiden and my blessing on your loves." 
 
 Alden s gaze rested a brief space gratefully, lov 
 ingly, on the doorway through which the Captain 
 had disappeared into the house. For the moment 
 his thought was of him, his friend, and he gave 
 thanks that God had granted him such a friend. 
 Then with a quick rush of feeling, the gladness 
 that was at his heart visible in his eyes, he turned 
 from the doorway and his thought, his one thought, 
 was of Priscilla. 
 
 As he took his way down the street to Elder 
 Brewster s cottage, where with the Elder and his 
 wife and their two sons, Love and Wrestling, lived 
 Priscilla Mullins and Mary Chilton and Elizabeth 
 Tilley, three Puritan maidens orphaned by the 
 cruelty of the Puritans first winter in New Eng 
 land, his one thought of Priscilla, sweetly, enchant- 
 ingly assertive, drove all else from his mind. And 
 with the thought came visions of Priscilla ; Pris 
 cilla laughing, teasing, gay, serious, sorrowful ; 
 Priscilla spinning ; Priscilla singing psalms ; Pris 
 cilla fetching water from the spring; Priscilla 
 tending the sick and dying, and praying over the 
 graves of the dead ; Priscilla in her many moods,
 
 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 9 
 
 amid the manifoldly sad and sober scenes of the 
 young colony s life. 
 
 Chiefest of all these visions, brighter, more vivid 
 than the rest, came one of Priscilla standing beside 
 her father s chair listening in a manner part grave, 
 part merry, while Alden, addressing himself to Mr. 
 Mullins, presented the Captain s suit. It was in 
 the late winter, several weeks before Mr. Mullins 
 death, quite some time ago, that Alden had gone 
 on his delicate mission for the Captain. Yet, as 
 clearly as though it were yesterday, he remembered 
 his own tragic sinkings of heart as with downcast 
 eyes, hesitatingly, perfunctorily, he went through 
 his part. Priscilla had read his hesitations and 
 perfunctory eloquence. She had guessed at his 
 sinkings of heart. With a thrill of joy he recalled 
 the light in her eyes half-laughing, half tender, 
 which she had turned upon him when at length, 
 with an uncontrollable sigh of self pity, he had 
 ventured to raise his glance to hers. Then she had 
 spoken, and the tone of her voice had seemed to 
 open Paradise to him. " Why dost thou not speak 
 for thyself, John ? " she had asked him. But he 
 had not answered, he had not entered at the door 
 of Paradise held so invitingly open. He had 
 averted his face and gone on his way, along the 
 difficult path of duty, suffering, sorrowing ; an ever- 
 present vision of honor, honor in the military form 
 of the little Captain, had kept him to his path. Now 
 the vision had dismissed him. Once more Paradise
 
 10 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 was revealed to him. He might knock at the door 
 would it open to him ? He might speak for him 
 self would Priscilla hear him ? His question 
 became a prayer, and in the spirit of a reverential 
 lover he approached the Elder s house. 
 
 He mounted the doorstep of the house and stood 
 a moment on the threshold, looking in. Priscilla 
 was not there. Yet her presence seemed to per 
 vade the place. Her spinning-wheel in the corner, 
 the chair in which she often sat, her prayer-book 
 lying open on the table, other and various things 
 associated with her spoke to the young man subtly, 
 eloquently, in a language which the heart alone 
 understands. 
 
 From the loft above came sounds of talk and 
 laughter, the talk and laughter of girls, and in a 
 moment Mary Chilton and Elizabeth Tilley ap 
 peared at the head of the stairway leading from 
 the loft to the living-room below. At sight of 
 Alden standing on the threshold, Elizabeth, a young, 
 pert maiden, called out saucily, " Art looking for 
 Priscilla, John Alden ? She s not here." 
 
 But Mary, who was older, graver, kinder than 
 Elizabeth, came down and talked with Alden of 
 the warm weather, of the sailing of the " May 
 flower," of the coming of spring with its birds and 
 its flowers, of the sowing of the fields. Briefly and 
 quietly she spoke and at last, standing by the 
 window and looking out, with careful carelessness 
 she observed, " Priscilla is long in returning. She
 
 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 11 
 
 should be home by now. See, the sun is past set 
 ting and the twilight is falling and fading fast. 
 The Elder hath often told us tis not safe for a 
 maid to go about alone after sundown. But Pris- 
 cilla laughs at all cautious. She is too fearless. 
 If you are going by the brook road, whither she 
 hath gone, and should see her, John Alden, will 
 you not send her home ? She shall be scolded by 
 me, her little mother, as she calls me, for being a 
 most rash and reckless maid." 
 
 " I will find the truant, little mother, and bring 
 her home to you," John Alden answered, and his 
 eyes thanked Mary Chilton for her kind heart and 
 gentle manner. 
 
 Leaving the Elder s cottage and going down the 
 hill to the brookside, John Alden found himself 
 repeating, more appreciatively, more fervently than 
 ever before, the joyous words from the beautiful 
 old Song of Songs : 
 
 " Lo, the winter is past, 
 The rain is over and gone, 
 The flowers appear on the earth ; 
 The time of the singing of birds is come, 
 And the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." 
 
 His heart was attuned to the words of the song. 
 He looked at the springing greenness about him, 
 listened to the softly blended harmonies of brook 
 and birds and rustling trees, inhaled the refreshing 
 scents of the earth s new life, and lifting his face
 
 12 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 to the mild April wind, rejoiced that the world was 
 fair, that he himself was young, that life and labor 
 and love were before him. He forgot the winter, 
 its cold privation, suffering, and death. In a glad 
 abandon of the spirit, that accorded with the new 
 spring-time, he gave himself to dreams of the fu 
 ture, hopes, and promises ; and the dreams, the 
 hopes, and promises all centred about the maiden 
 Priscilla. 
 
 At length, like the realization of his dreams, an 
 answer to his hopes and promises, the figure of the 
 maiden, indistinct in the gathering dusk, was re 
 vealed to him. He had crossed the brook and was 
 mounting the rise of ground on the further side. 
 He saw Priscilla standing on the summit, the gray 
 of her Puritan cloak detaching itself conspicuously 
 from the dark green of the pine forest that was be 
 hind her. The nearness of the forest made her 
 appear the child of the wilderness that she was. 
 
 A rush of tenderness went over Alden as he looked 
 at her, tenderness for her in her loneliness, and a 
 longing for the right to comfort and protect her. 
 He ascended the slope quietly, and coming near 
 her, stood still and spoke her name. 
 
 Priscilla, surprised by his voice, turned quickly 
 to him. " John Alden, you unmannerly lad ! " she 
 exclaimed. " Why do you come upon me thus 
 stealthily, like a wolf or an Indian seeking prey ? 
 Dost wish to fright me ? " 
 
 The scant welcome of her words did not discon-
 
 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 13 
 
 cert Alden. He met it with unabashed tranquillity. 
 He had learned not to mind Priscilla s playful 
 scolding, but to love it rather as a part of Pris 
 cilla s self, as much and as distinctive a part as 
 her French ancestry, or her dark hair or darker 
 eyes. 
 
 "I think I could not fright you if I would, 
 Priscilla," he answered. " You are a fearless 
 maid. I have known you for such ever since I 
 have known you. And Mary knows you for such. 
 Indeed, Mary is anxious for you on account of 
 your fearlessness and hath sent me as ambassador 
 to fetch you home." 
 
 " And if I have no mind to be fetched home ? " 
 Priscilla regarded the young man archly, teasingly 
 and with a baffling laugh seated herself upon a 
 fallen tree-trunk near the shadow of the wood. 
 There she sat much as though it were her inten 
 tion to remain there always. 
 
 Alden immediately seated himself on the ground 
 not far from her. "Then will I wait until you 
 undergo a change of mind," he announced calmly, 
 determinately. 
 
 Priscilla laughed softly to herself. " You make 
 an excellent ambassador, Master Alden," she com 
 mented in lightly mocking tone. 
 
 Alden glanced quickly at the maiden. It seemed 
 to him that in her words there lurked a delicately 
 veiled reminder of that other time when he had 
 come as ambassador to her, and he searched her
 
 14 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 face in the dim light, thinking that perchance he 
 might find there the reminder verified. But her 
 face told him nothing. It wore a mask of smiling 
 unconcern. 
 
 A barrier was dividing her from him, hiding her 
 thoughts from his understanding, a barrier that 
 his own conscience had raised when it forbade his 
 speaking for himself. Now his conscience no 
 longer forbade. He was impatient to break down 
 the barrier. 
 
 "I make a very poor ambassador," he said, 
 seriously, in answer to her laughing comment of 
 a moment before ; and after an expressive pause, 
 " I say so, thinking of the Captain and the part I 
 played for him ; " and after another expressive 
 pause, "Priscilla, the Captain is our friend once 
 more. He has forgiven you your answer and me 
 my poor ambassadorship." Alden spoke briefly, 
 jerkily, but his voice was charged with meaning 
 and deep feeling. 
 
 Priscilla did not answer. Better than words, 
 however, her silence told him that she understood. 
 
 They began talking of indifferent things. Love 
 was not mentioned between them, yet the intona 
 tions of their voices, their looks, the pauses that 
 now and then fell between them spoke only of 
 that one thing. 
 
 The moon rose while they talked, and the steel 
 blue of the sky changed to gray. Lights flashed 
 out from the little log cabin settlement below them.
 
 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 15 
 
 They could see the dark curve of the shore and 
 the gleam of the water beyond. But as far as the 
 eye could reach, there was no sight of ships on the 
 sea, or farther than the one street of Plymouth, no 
 sight of houses on the shore. Saving only the 
 moon and the lights of the little settlement, they 
 were alone in the wilderness. But their alone- 
 ness was sweet to them ; and this, because there 
 was no longer any barrier dividing them. They 
 were together. Both were feeling keenly, ex 
 quisitely, the weight of their nearness to one 
 another. 
 
 They talked of England and of the friends that 
 they had left there, of the new home and of the 
 friends who had come thither only to find graves 
 waiting them on the hillside. They spoke of 
 sorrow, but reminiscentially, as though sorrow 
 were of the past, not of the present or future. 
 
 Priscilla put her hand to her bodice and drew 
 forth a bunch of delicately fragrant blossoms, which 
 she handed to John Alden. 
 
 " Look ! " she said. " I was feeling lonely and 
 sad this afternoon, when I happened upon these 
 pretty pink flowers. The woods where I found 
 them were sweet with them. Smell them ! Are 
 they not fragrant ? Didst ever see any like them 
 in old England, John? No; nor did I. I think 
 they must have been invented especially for us, 
 Pilgrims in a strange land, to welcome us, to give 
 us hope and courage."
 
 16 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 Alden looked from the flowers to the maiden s 
 face, smiling. " T is a pretty thought, Priscilla, 
 and worthy of you. Already you make me 
 love the little blossoms. They seem to be 
 whispering rosy promises of a new life, a new 
 home, a new love. Canst hear their whispering, 
 Priscilla ? " 
 
 He gave the flowers back into her hand, and 
 his own hand having found hers could not leave it, 
 but stayed clasping it and speaking to it the new, 
 strange, immeasurably sweet language of love. 
 And her hand did not leave his, but rested in it as 
 though there it had found its natural dwelling 
 place. There needed no question to be asked or 
 answered between them, save that of the hands 
 and the eyes ; and their first kiss was given 
 and taken without a word, in the silence of the 
 spring night, the forest behind them, and before 
 them the sea rolling its solemn monotone on the 
 shore. The spirit of the forest and of the sea 
 entered into their love, making it a tiling deep, 
 lasting, infinite. 
 
 When at length they came down upon the 
 street and neared the Elder s cottage, they found 
 the Elder and his wife sitting on the doorstep, 
 and Mary Chilton, her fair hair lit into a glow 
 from the candlelight within, standing behind the 
 Elder and his wife and leaning against the door 
 post. 
 
 At the approach of the two laggard ones, Mary
 
 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 17 
 
 remarked in gentle raillery, " So you have brought 
 the truant home, John Alden, or should I say the 
 two truants, for are not you a truant yourself, 
 John, when you are so late returning ? And did 
 you fear the colony might send a second ambassa 
 dor to fetch you both home that you have come at 
 last?" 
 
 John Alden did not answer. This was not so 
 strange, for Alden was habitually a silent man. 
 But neither did Priscilla answer. And this was 
 stranger, for Priscilla was ever ready with her 
 tongue, even to the point of pertness. Both only 
 laughed, and a new note sounded in their voices, a 
 note which may or may not have been detected by 
 other than themselves. 
 
 Alden stopped a moment at the cottage to ex 
 change a few words with the Elder about the 
 sowing to go forward the next day, and about the 
 probability of continued warm weather. 
 
 Priscilla, leaving Alden s side, went up the step 
 and into the house. As she passed through the 
 doorway, Mary caught her hand and with a whis 
 pered word, followed her into the house. 
 
 From his station without by the window, 
 looking into the candlelit room, Alden was 
 able to witness all that took place between the 
 friends. He saw Priscilla, shyly laughing and 
 protesting, draw away from Mary and then, 
 grown suddenly grave, go back to her, put her 
 arm about her, and kiss her, and immediately
 
 18 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 breaking from her, vanish up the stairway into 
 the darkness above. 
 
 Alderi understood the meaning of the little 
 scene, and with a happy catch of the heart re 
 minded himself that his great happiness was no 
 dream, but a reality ; that it was true he and Pris- 
 cilla were sweethearts, promised sweethearts. 
 
 He left the Elder s cottage and went on up the 
 street to the Captain s house, the house that was 
 his home as well the Captain s, his home until 
 and again he was conscious of a happy catch at his 
 heart until he should make a new home. 
 
 He found the Captain seated by a table reading. 
 He went and stood beside his chair, looking down 
 at him and at the book that he was reading. The 
 book, he saw, was the Captain s favorite, " Caesar s 
 Commentaries." 
 
 The Captain, though aware of his coming, did 
 not glance up at him, but straightway burst forth 
 into praises of the man of whom he was reading ; 
 his wisdom, his valor, his greatness. In his enthu 
 siasm over Caius Julius Caesar, he quite forgot 
 John and Priscilla and love, general and particular. 
 
 Alden answered his enthusiasm quietly, agree 
 ing with him in all things, and when at length 
 the Captain s praises had run their course and 
 a pause followed, he remarked : " I have obeyed 
 you, dear Captain. I am returned from doing your 
 bidding." 
 
 The words, and something in the voice that
 
 IN MAYFLOWER TIME, 19 
 
 spoke them, made the Captain look up at last. 
 Immediately he saw and understood the eloquence 
 of the face bending over him. lie was on his 
 feet. John Alden s hand was held in a clasp so 
 vigorous that it pained. The two men looked 
 into each other s eyes. 
 
 " Johnny ! " was all the Captain said. But it 
 was enough. 
 
 John Alden and Priscilla married. Every one 
 knows that. They lived long and were happy, and 
 their home was on Duxbury Hill near to another 
 home that was the Captain s. Sons and daughters 
 rose up about them, some reflecting the fair hair, 
 blue eyes, and slow, tranquil nature of the father, 
 others the dark eyes and hair and the quick, gay, 
 impulsive nature of the mother. One fancies these 
 sons and daughters of John and Priscilla Alden 
 beautiful and noble as the sons and daughters of a 
 deep, lasting, infinite love should be. 
 
 Of course these sons and daughters, in their 
 turn, found the Mayflower, listened to its whisper 
 ings, and married as their father and mother had 
 done before them. One of them, a daughter, she 
 who was most like her mother, no doubt, mar 
 ried the Captain s son. Hers was the marriage 
 most pleasing to her parents. They felt that in 
 giving her to the Captain s son they were paying 
 in part the great debt of gratitude that they owed 
 their friend Myles Standish.
 
 20 IN MAYFLOWER TIME. 
 
 The Mayflower blooms in other parts of our land 
 than in the Plymouth woods. But nowhere, it is 
 said, does it bloom in such pristine loveliness as 
 there. It is as though the love of John Alden and 
 Priscilla, a love that has become a beautiful classic 
 in the romance of our land, had entered for a 
 moment into the soul of the flower and left with 
 it the secret of its divine essence.
 
 n. 
 
 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 
 
 IT was an afternoon in late autumn of the year 
 1690. A blustering wind from the sea was blow 
 ing over the little Dutch town of New Amsterdam, 
 New York the city had been newly dighted some 
 score of years before, but the loyal burghers had 
 not yet learned to give the English title except 
 with sorry grace; the spiteful little monosyllable 
 stuck in their throats and never came without an 
 angry sputter. 
 
 The wind that blew so boisterously that autumn 
 afternoon was a contentious wind. It upset boxes 
 and barrels in the region of the docks ; it rattled 
 the doors and windows of the low, gable-roofed, 
 high-stooped houses that stretched along the Strand 
 and the Heeren Gracht and the wide sweep of 
 Broadway ; and it caught up and drove before it, 
 along the thoroughfares and byways, an army of 
 hectic leaves russet, gold, and vivid red. It was 
 as though the wind had caught the spirit of the 
 city, a spirit of war. 
 
 The wind rattled the windows of the council 
 chamber at the fort. But those within minded it 
 not. They were occupied with other matter than 
 
 21
 
 22 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 
 
 that of the wind. The room declared the business 
 in which they were engaged. It was cluttered 
 with arms, ammunition, harnesses, and provisions. 
 There was the noise of many voices clamoring, 
 haranguing, and disputing. 
 
 At his table, in the centre of the room, the one 
 calm rock of strength in all that seething current 
 of restlessness, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction, sat 
 the people s governor, Mynheer Jacob Leisler. 
 Gravely silent, he listened with a steady patience 
 to the many who came reporting news, more 
 often bad than good, and services, more often 
 unsuccessful than successful, presenting petitions, 
 and recounting grievances. Only an occasional 
 deepening of the furrows in his brow and a con 
 vulsive tightening of the large fist resting on the 
 table before him gave proof of the weariness and 
 perplexity that assailed the inner man. 
 
 The signs of weariness and perplexity, though 
 unnoticed by the many, were not lost upon a cer 
 tain one in that long file of deputies, petitioners, 
 and complainants, to whom Mynheer was giving 
 audience. This one, more observant than the rest, 
 having despatched his business, went away thought 
 ful and troubled. Leaving the fort, he turned his 
 steps down the Broad Way, moving slowly and 
 with a serious, preoccupied air that contrasted 
 strangely with his boyish looks. He gave no heed 
 to the passers-by ; but they gave much to him. 
 
 " Tis the clerk of the town, yt>ung Gouveneur,"
 
 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 23 
 
 remarked a portly, pompous citizen to his com 
 panion. 
 
 " Humph ! " ejaculated the other, more portij 
 and pompous than the first. " He who was once 
 Leisler s pot-boy? A fine management of affairs 
 this, when such as he are in the counsels of the 
 government." 
 
 " Oh, the Yonker is not so bad. He is of gentle 
 blood, t is said, the son of a brave Huguenot sol 
 dier. Note you his features and his bearing ? See 
 you the French in them ? " 
 
 " Aye, he is French enough in spite of his Dutch 
 coat and breeches. But French or Dutch I like 
 him not, since he is of the riotous band commanded 
 by that rebel and traitor at the fort." 
 
 " Hist ! Have a care how you call names him 
 who is still a mighty power in the city." 
 
 " I fear not Leisler. His day is almost done." 
 
 " Look you," said one round-eyed, rosy-cheeked 
 Dutch maiden to another. "Is not that a hand 
 some Yonker over yonder?" 
 
 " Waste not your sighs on him. T is Abram 
 Gouveneur. He has no eyes for us, nor for any 
 maid however fair, saving only the daughter of the 
 Heer Governor." 
 
 " Mary Leisler, mean you ? She and the hand 
 some Yonker are sweethearts, then ? " 
 
 " Aye, and have been ever since childhood. 
 They were always together, Abram being a sort of 
 ward of Mynheer Leisler. He and his mother
 
 24 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 
 
 came to this colony as pauper refugees, t is said, 
 and would have been sold to pay their passage 
 fees, had it not been for Mynheer s kindness." 
 
 " So ? Tell me, what did Mynheer ? " 
 
 " Why, he did even pay the passage fees himself, 
 deeming it a foul indignity that people of such 
 gentle blood as the boy Abram and his mother 
 should be sold like to any common felons." 
 
 " Twas like Mynheer. One is ever hearing 
 proofs of his goodness and generosity." 
 
 " Yes ; and in tins case his goodness and gener 
 osity were not misplaced, it seems. There s not 
 a finer Yonker in all the province than Abram 
 Gouveneur. See what the people think of him ! 
 They have made him clerk of the town." 
 
 " T is a high office for so young a man. The 
 Yonker must be as clever as he is handsome." 
 
 Thus they discoursed about him, some censur 
 ing and some approving, by their talk disclosing 
 their own politics whether Leislerian or anti- 
 Leislerian. 
 
 Meanwhile, he about whom they talked went on 
 his way, quite unconscious of the comment he was 
 occasioning. As he came to the Strand his face 
 brightened and he quickened his pace. Whatever 
 may have been the thoughts that troubled him, it 
 was evident he had banished them for matter of 
 more agreeable reflection. 
 
 Arrived at a certain house on the Strand, he 
 entered by the side gateway. With a few quick
 
 GOOD DAY TO YOU, BELLE MARIE."
 
 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 25 
 
 bounds, he mounted the back stoop and, leaning 
 over the open half door, looked in upon the 
 kitchen. 
 
 Then, as ever, that kitchen presented a scene 
 of thrift and tidiness. The furniture looked 
 freshly polished, the hearth tiles freshly stained. 
 The pots and pans upon the shelf above the fire 
 place flashed like new, and the blue and white 
 Delft ware in the corner cupboard shone with the 
 brightness of a recent and very vigorous wiping. 
 The floor had been scrubbed to the perfection of 
 cleanliness, and Mary Leisler, her arms bared and 
 her skirts tucked up, was sprinkling it with sand 
 and then, with rapid, skilful strokes of her broom, 
 marking a border of elaborate pattern around the 
 room. The sunlight, streaming in through the 
 high window above the chimney corner, fell on the 
 girl s golden hair, only half concealed by the little 
 Dutch cap that she wore, making it the most 
 radiant spot in all that radiant room. 
 
 " Good day to you, belle Marie." 
 
 At sound of Abram s voice, sudden and unex 
 pected, there was a slight ruffling of the girl s 
 Dutch calm, the suggestion of a start, and a faint 
 deepening of the color in her cheeks. " Why, 
 Ab m, lad, how you did startle me ! " she declared 
 in soft, even tones. 
 
 Putting aside sand-box, and broom, she came 
 towards him, and opening wide the half door would 
 have had him enter, but Abram shook Ids head.
 
 26 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 
 
 " I must not spoil your lovely scroll-work with 
 my clumsy tread," he said, pointing to the pattern 
 in the sand. " Come you with me instead. See 
 how the sunlight beckons from the meadows in the 
 Madge Padge yonder." 
 
 He looked off toward the meadows and then into 
 the girl s eyes, with smiling invitation in his glance. 
 He had hoped to see his smile reflected in those 
 eyes, but instead he read a new seriousness in their 
 clear, blue depths. 
 
 Mary shook her head, hesitating. She seemed 
 to be searching her mind for an objection to his 
 proposition. " T is a windy day for walking," she 
 said at last. 
 
 " Windy, say you ? Well, what of that ? Have 
 we not faced the wind before, Marie, you and I 
 together?" He was still smiling and she still 
 serious. 
 
 " The mother is out," continued Mary, having 
 bethought her of another objection. " When she 
 returns and finds me gone, she will wonder, perhaps 
 worry." 
 
 " You have only to speak to the children. They 
 have tongues. They can tell her whither you 
 have gone." 
 
 " The children ! There again ! They should 
 not be left alone." 
 
 " Oh, Marie, give the children a holiday. And 
 give me one as well." Then after a moment s 
 pause and forethought that made his pleading all
 
 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 27 
 
 the more emphatic, " So long is it since you and 
 I have taken one of our old-time walks together," 
 he declared. " So ardently have I set my heart on 
 this particular walk to-day. Surely, Marie, you 
 will not say me nay." 
 
 There was an elusive showing of a smile in her 
 eyes and of dimples in her cheeks, as she looked 
 up at him. " You were ever a wicked tempter, 
 Ab m," she said, pushing him gently from her 
 with a frown of disapproval. She spoke fondly, 
 a little sadly. " I do wrong to listen to you," and 
 she turned from him as though to end the matter. 
 Then, the next moment, with that delightful in 
 consistency which is said to be distinctly feminine, 
 she went and put on her hood and long coat. 
 
 Certain it was, however, that an unusual mood 
 had taken possession of Mary that afternoon. 
 Abram missed her sunny looks, her merry chatter, 
 and her light-hearted laughter. As they walked 
 side by side along the winding Strand, through 
 the half-ruined Water-Gate, and out into the 
 open country that stretched beyond the city wall, 
 he regarded her wonderingly, a little anxiously. 
 What had come over her ? Why was she so grave 
 and uncommunicative ? He must know the reason 
 of this new seriousness. 
 
 They had been talking at random and with fre 
 quent pauses in their conversation. Suddenly 
 Abram broke out tentatively and as if to himself, 
 " Little red hood, I am glad that you came."
 
 28 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 
 
 " T is an old friend, this little red hood," the 
 owner of the hood made answer. 
 
 " Yes, and therefore am I glad it came, else 
 might I feel myself in strange company." 
 
 " You find me strange company ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "So?" 
 
 The short monosyllable spoken with rising in 
 flection encouraged him to proceed. 
 
 " You are so serious. Hardly do I know you for 
 my old-time merry playfellow." 
 
 Mary did not answer immediately. They had 
 crossed the stream that flowed through the Madge 
 Padge, what is now Maiden Lane, but what was 
 then a pretty little dell, shaded by birch and 
 willow, which the Dutch maids and matrons used 
 for laundry purposes. They had climbed the hill 
 that rose beyond the Madge Padge. And they 
 had come to a grove of ash and maple interspersed 
 with hemlock, a pleasant spot that had been the 
 scene of many of their childhood s happy playtimes. 
 Unconsciously, as though by habit, their steps had 
 led them thither. 
 
 Mary seated herself upon a fallen tree trunk and 
 Abram threw himself upon the ground at her feet. 
 The wind sighed through the branches above them ; 
 the voice of the brook rising from the valley below 
 spoke to them in plaintive note ; and the dead 
 leaves fluttered and fell about them, gentle remind 
 ers of the changefulness of seasons and of time.
 
 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 29 
 
 To Abrara, impressionable, imaginative, it seemed 
 that nature was whispering forebodings. And as 
 he gazed upward at Mary, this sense of whispered 
 forebodings was not lessened. She sat with her 
 hands clasped rather stiffly in her lap. Her long 
 coat, dark green like the green of the hemlock, fell 
 about her, touching the ground on either side. 
 Strands of her bright gold hair escaped from the 
 hood were blown across her cheek and forehead, 
 and her eyes looked forth in dreamy scrutiny upon 
 the further bank of the broad, tranquil-flowing 
 river, where the Palisades towered in purple splen 
 dor against the sunset sky. Her thoughts, it ap 
 peared, had gone wandering. Indeed, she might 
 have been some woodland fairy, a dryad of the 
 grove, so strange she seemed, so unreal, so remote. 
 
 " Your merry old-time playfellow, she is gone," 
 she said at last, soberly, in answer to his remark of 
 several moments before, "gone forever. Expect 
 not to find this other who has taken her place as 
 full of fun and frolic as was she." Then with a 
 downward glance at Abram and in a lighter tone, 
 " Think you I would see lads such as you, Ab m, 
 and my torment of a brother, Jacob, Jr., growing 
 old and staid and remain the same rattle-pated 
 maid of former days ? " she inquired. 
 
 In spite of the lightness of her tone, her eyes were 
 still full of the new seriousness, a sad and troubled 
 seriousness, that brought an answering tenderness 
 into Abram s eyes.
 
 30 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 
 
 "Nay, Marie," he cried, and he spoke with the 
 unreasoning chivalry of a young lover. " Keep 
 young, keep happy, keep merry. Leave the grow 
 ing old and the sober thinking, as the hard fight 
 ing, to us lads." 
 
 Mary shook her head. " T is like you, Ab rn, to 
 speak so," she said. " You were ever too generous 
 with me. But you are wrong. Even though I be 
 a maid, I must bear my part in the struggle. Else 
 would I be an unworthy friend to you, an unworthy 
 daughter to my father." 
 
 There was a silence of several seconds between 
 them, during which the sighing of the wind in the 
 trees and the plaintive voice of the brook were the 
 only sounds that broke the stillness. Then Mary 
 spoke again, quietly but with enthusiasm in her tone. 
 " Oh, Ab m, if you but knew how often I have 
 wished myself a lad like you, that I might give my 
 service, mayhap my life, to the aid of my father 
 and for the people s cause ! " and after a short pause, 
 "Ab m, how seems my father to you?" she asked 
 anxiously. 
 
 Abram s eyes fell to the ground beneath her 
 searching glance. The serious, troubled look that 
 had been upon his face when he left the fort re 
 turned. But he answered with an assumption of 
 cheerfulness, "As brave and indomitable as ever, 
 Marie." 
 
 " They say his enemies are increasing," Mary 
 remarked sadly ; " that his friends are falling off ;
 
 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 31 
 
 that his day will soon be done. They call him 
 rebel and tyrant, a peace breaker, a butcher, a 
 brawler other and more dreadful names." Her 
 voice broke. " Ab m," she appealed, more as one 
 asking comfort than as one in need of assurance, 
 " you are still true to him, still loyal ? " 
 
 Abram flung up his head and looked into the 
 girl s face, his own face all aflame with the emotion 
 which he had been so long repressing, " You know 
 that I would die for him for you, belle Marie" 
 he cried, his voice almost harsh in the intensity of 
 its ardor. 
 
 Mary raised her hand to her eyes as though to 
 shut out the sight of that glowing, radiant face. 
 The other hand resting in her lap, small and white 
 and yet wonderfully like that large fist of the Heer 
 Governor at the fort, tightened with the same con 
 vulsive motion. Then an unusual firmness, almost 
 a sternness, came into her face. 
 
 " T is time we went, Ab m," she said, rising 
 from her seat on the fallen tree trunk. " See 
 yonder how late it grows," and she walked to the 
 entrance of the grove and pointed to where, above 
 the Palisades on the further shore, the sunset colors 
 were fading in the sky. 
 
 Abram followed her with silent protest. He 
 knew her ignoring of his lover s speech to be some 
 thing more than a pretty maidenly wile. There 
 was that in her face which foretold future conflict, 
 future pain.
 
 32 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 
 
 They walked for a long time in silence. Mary 
 avoided his tenderly accusing eyes. Not until they 
 came to the brook and she took the helping hand 
 which he held out to her did her glance meet his, 
 and then it was regretfully, sadly. 
 
 " Ab m," she said, as they left the brook behind 
 them and went on across the meadows, " there is 
 something I would speak with you about, some 
 thing that has been much upon my mind these last 
 few days. Indeed, twas principally to speak of it 
 to you that I agreed to take this walk with you this 
 afternoon." 
 
 Abram turned to her quickly, inquiringly. At 
 last there was to be an end of all this mystery, an 
 explanation of Mary s strange and unusual mood. 
 
 " T is about a maid," Mary continued, " a maid 
 such as I, who has often wished herself a lad that 
 she might help in the great cause to which so much 
 of labor and of life is being sacrificed. One day 
 her mother came to her and said : You wish to 
 help, my daughter ? Here is your opportunity. A 
 man who has it in his power to make or ruin the 
 cause has made your hand the price of his services. 
 Your father, knowing your loyalty, has answered 
 for you, he has promised you. Shame not your 
 father s word, shame not your own loyalty by a re 
 fusal." All this was said in Mary s accustomed soft 
 and even tones. But as she went on it was with 
 an eagerness, a pleading. " What could the maid 
 say? There was but one answer possible. For
 
 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 32 
 
 what mattered it that she did not love this man ? 
 Indeed, what mattered it that she loved some one 
 else and that, mayhap, this some one else loved 
 her ? What were a pair of foolish hearts compared 
 with a great cause, a matter of life and death ? " 
 
 They were nearing the city wall. As they came 
 within the shadow of its grass-grown ruins, Mary 
 turned to Abram. " What think you, Ab m ? " she 
 asked, with a tremor in her voice ; " did the maid 
 do right or wrong when she agreed to marry the 
 man who made her hand the price of his services ? " 
 
 For a moment Abram s admiration of Mary s 
 devotion to what she deemed her duty and loyalty 
 was strongest with him. His doubts and protests 
 and the cryings of his heart were stilled by a realiz 
 ing sense of the girl s courage and unselfishness of 
 purpose. He knew better than she how matters 
 stood with her father and what were the reasons 
 and needs for her decision. Through the dimness 
 of the twilight and his own blurred vision, he gazed 
 upward at her as she stood on a rise of ground 
 above him. Her hands were folded as if in prayer 
 high upon her bosom and showed strangely pale 
 against the dark of her cloak; a sweet enthusiasm, 
 which was not without its look of sadness and 
 compassion, was shining in her eyes, and to Abram s 
 young and ardent soul she seemed very like a 
 painting of some golden-haired Flemish Madonna, 
 such as those seen in the old Dutch churches across 
 the sea. He lowered his gaze in reverent homage
 
 34 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 
 
 and answered huskily, " I know not, Marie. I 
 only know that she did nobly." 
 
 Then, with the determination of one who has 
 made up his mind to do away with subterfuge and 
 mystery and to stand face to face with the truth, 
 however hard, however cruel, in a voice that was 
 still husky with emotion he said, " Of course, t is 
 yourself of whom you speak, Marie ? " 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " And the man ? " 
 
 " Mynheer Milborne." 
 
 At the mention of that name a hot flush over 
 spread Abram s face which, when it had passed, 
 left him pale and rebellious. His lips tightened 
 and he clenched his hands like one strugging 
 against some physical anguish. A vision of Myn 
 heer Milborne, the governor s secretary, rose before 
 him a dark and gloomy man, nearer the age of 
 Mary s father than of Mary s self, one who had 
 never been a favorite with Abram and the other 
 Yonkers at the fort. " Old gruff and grum," they 
 had called him. 
 
 " Nay, Marie," he cried, breaking a long and 
 painful silence, " t is too great a sacrifice. It shall 
 not be. You shall not marry Mynheer Milborne. 
 Who is Mynheer Milborne to ruin your young 
 life ? Surely the cause may prosper without the 
 aid of Mynheer Milborne. There be other men at 
 the fort than Mynheer Milborne." 
 
 The bitterness and sarcasm of the lad s tone in-
 
 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 35 
 
 creased with each reiteration of the name. He 
 flung up his head with the impetuous motion char 
 acteristic of him. A proud, defiant love looked 
 from his eyes. "Have you forgotten your old 
 playfellow, Abram Gouveneur?" he asked in a 
 voice suddenly grown tender and yet bitter and 
 sarcastic as before. " What is to become of him 
 when the belle Marie becomes Vrouw Milborne ? 
 His love is yours as it always has been, always will 
 be. Do you fling it away ? " 
 
 " Ab m ! " Mary spoke only the one word, but 
 there was a volume of mingled entreaty and com 
 mand in her tone. Her hands were held out to 
 ha m imploringly, and her face, pale as his own, 
 was quivering with protesting, supplicating love. 
 And in her eyes there shone, its radiance un- 
 dimmed, the light of a steadfast purpose. The 
 daughter had inherited the father s indomitable 
 will. 
 
 Abram saw the light and realized the hopeless 
 ness of further opposition to that will. He saw, 
 too, the outstretched hands and quivering face, 
 and with the instinct of true love he forgot his 
 own pain in seeking to lighten Mary s pain. 
 
 He knelt and raised the outstretched hands to 
 his lips. " Forgive me, belle Marie" he faltered 
 brokenly. " I make it hard for you. The pain of 
 giving you up unmanned me for a time. But look, 
 I am strong again," and he raised his face to hers 
 with a brave, reassuring smile.
 
 36 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 
 
 " Ab m dear lad," she said, echoing his falter 
 ing, broken tones. In the uncertain light her 
 answering smile showed tremulous, suggesting 
 tears. She bent and kissed his forehead. The sad, 
 dispassionate fervor with which she did it gave 
 consecration to the act. 
 
 When she raised her head again it was with a 
 start. Abram s gaze followed hers to the Water- 
 Gate close by. There in the opening stood two 
 men. They were engaged in low and earnest dis 
 course. There was no mistaking the powerful, 
 robust figure of the one ; the other was not so 
 easily recognized, for he was shrouded in a long 
 black coat, and his steeple-crown hat was worn low 
 on his forehead so that the lower part of his face 
 was in shadow. But Mary and Abram knew both 
 men immediately. They were the Heer Governor 
 and his secretary. 
 
 The fixed gaze of the young lovers arrested the 
 attention of the Governor. He turned in their 
 direction, peered through the dusk, and recognized 
 them. " Mary ! Gouveneur ! " he called. 
 
 They went to him. The quiet dignity that was 
 theirs, as they stood before him and met his search 
 ing glance, must have appeased whatever of dis 
 turbance or displeasure he may have felt at seeing 
 them together. He turned to his tall, dark com 
 panion with a broad smile. " Look to your bride, 
 friend Jacob," he said. " It appears she hath been 
 overloopen the country with my young Greheim-
 
 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 61 
 
 sehryver in your absence. The maid is a wander- 
 foot, I warn you, and needs close and careful 
 scrutiny." And to Mary, in the same joking strain, 
 " Mynheer Milborne is only now returned from 
 Albany," he declared. " We had just met, here at 
 the Water-Poort, and he was telling me that he had 
 had no dinner and was famished. Go you home 
 with him, child, and treat him to the good mother s 
 supawn and rolliches" Then to Abram, more 
 seriously, laying a hand affectionately on the 
 lad s shoulder, " As for you, my young Geheim- 
 schryver," he concluded, " come you with me to 
 the fort. There is work to be done and plenty. 
 You will earn your salt to-night, boy." 
 
 And so they parted, Abraham and Mary, in the 
 twilight, by the Water- Gate. They parted quite 
 as though theirs was an ordinary parting, Mary- 
 going off leaning on Mynheer Milborne s arm, 
 listening to his talk of supawn and rolliches 
 and other practical wisdoms, and Abram preceding 
 with the Heer Governor to the fort, there to per 
 form the duties of his office ; but to their young 
 hearts it seemed that life was ended, that only a 
 joyless existence was left them. 
 
 After long years of sorrow and of suffering, 
 Abram and Mary met again. The cause to 
 which they had sacrificed so much was lost. 
 The people s Governor, the beloved father and 
 patron, was dead ; and with him had died his sec-
 
 38 BESIDE THE WATER-GATE. 
 
 retary and son-in-law, Mynheer Milborne. Mary 
 was without father or husband. Abram had lain 
 many months in prison, with the other five mem 
 bers of the Governor s council, under a sentence of 
 death. He had escaped to England, and by patient, 
 persevering efforts, and with the help of Jacob, 
 Jr., Mary s old-time " torment of a brother," had 
 pled for justice before the English king, and had 
 succeeded in clearing the name of Jacob Leisler 
 and the names of his family and council from " the 
 lying charge of treason." 
 
 Sorrow was behind Abram and Mary. The 
 music of wedding-bells was before them, and the 
 joys of a happy love. They came together with a 
 gladness like that of children, for happiness makes 
 young. The laughing light returned to their eyes 
 and the note of sweet content to their voices. 
 They were playfellows again.
 
 III. 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 " MY dear Lady Spottsgood, you are making a 
 veritable St. Anthony s meal. Where is your ap 
 petite ? Pray pay the debt you owe your stomach 
 and let Sambo help you to some of that pigeon 
 stew, and to the truffles that go with it ; they are 
 not bad, I assure you. And you, Mr. Fountain, 
 you dine like a Mohametan, without wine. Will 
 you not exercise your Christian privilege and drink 
 with us ? " 
 
 Thus spoke Colonel Byrd, turning from one to 
 another of his guests, a genial, jovial host, playing 
 a part for which nature had fitted him, the prince 
 of hospitality. 
 
 Lady Spottsgood, who sat on his right, declared 
 that he was making a gourmand of her. Never 
 theless, she submitted to the helping ; t was as im 
 possible, she said, to resist the Colonel s pigeon stew 
 and truffles as it was to resist the Colonel himself. 
 
 But the rector, who sat on the Colonel s left, 
 shook his head. He pointed smilingly to his goblet 
 of water. " I prefer the drink that Adam drank in 
 Paradise," he answered. 
 
 Miss Theky, a simple little spinster lady, pale- 
 
 39
 
 40 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 faced and golden-curled, whose place was next the 
 rector, regarded him with serious approval. " I 
 admire your preference, Mr. Fountain," she said. 
 "Water is a better drink than wine, is it not, 
 Colonel Byrd?" 
 
 The Colonel bit his lip, and exchanged glances 
 that might have been termed winks with certain 
 of his gentlemen guests, glances that were lost upon 
 Miss Tbeky. " Water is an excellent drink, Miss 
 Theky," he rejoined with suave diplomacy. " I 
 doubt not but that if a man drank only of water 
 he would alwaj^s eat well and sleep well, the stream 
 of life would flow cool and peaceable in his veins, 
 and if ever he dreamed of women, they would be 
 kind." 
 
 A gentleman seated near the foot of the table, a 
 young man with little of that debonair, cavalier 
 manner which characterized the Colonel and the 
 most of his gentlemen guests, but rather of a grave 
 and thoughtful mien, hearing what the Colonel 
 said, bent toward the Colonel s daughter, at whose 
 side he was so fortunate as to sit, and whispered in 
 the little ear half hidden beneath the chestnut hair, 
 " Cousin Evelyn, I vow I will drink naught but 
 water if by so doing I may dream of you as kind." 
 
 For a fraction of a second Evelyn s pretty almond- 
 shaped eyes looked into her cousin s. " I hope I 
 may be always kind, cousin Daniel," she answered, 
 "in dreams and out of dreams." Then leaning 
 forward and glancing down the table to those at the
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 41 
 
 further end, she declared with gentle raillery, " I 
 hear my father speaking in praise of water. He is 
 becoming simple in his tastes. Next he will be 
 advocating a primitive mode of living, and his 
 family will be losers." 
 
 The Colonel smiled in answer to his daughter s 
 raillery. " I am not so sure but that the primitive 
 mode of life is best," he said. " Mankind, I think, 
 are no gainers by the luxury of feather beds and 
 warm apartments. He sleeps best who sleeps on 
 the ground with a clear sky spangled with stars 
 above him for a canopy. I swear I am oft-times 
 tempted to set fire to my house, and to teach my 
 wife and children to sleep in the open air." 
 
 " I think t is only fair you should consult your 
 wife and children before setting fire to your house," 
 interposed the lady presiding at the foot of the table. 
 She was a beautiful young English woman, this 
 third wife of Colonel Byrd s and mistress of West- 
 over, a near connection of Martha and Teresa Blout. 
 " What do you say, Evelyn ? " she inquired, turn 
 ing to her step-daughter. 
 
 " I say that my father should be punished for his 
 cruel threat," said Evelyn. " I am going to tell 
 tales upon him." She addressed herself to the rec 
 tor. "Would you believe it, Mr. Fountain, my 
 father violated the Sabbath this morning by riding 
 five miles ? " 
 
 "Tut, tut, Evelyn, spare me," protested the 
 Colonel, laughing. " I have already atoned for
 
 42 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 my sin. Did I not pay for it by losing my favorite 
 pair of gold cuff buttons on the way ? And seri 
 ously, Mr. Fountain, is it a very grave offence to 
 ride upon the Sabbath, do you think?" 
 
 The rector regarded his wealthiest parishioner 
 with a leniency that showed he was not without his 
 share of that cavalier easiness of temperament pre 
 vailing in colonial Virginia. 
 
 I am for doing all acts of necessity, charity, or 
 self-preservation on the Lord s day as on any other 
 day," he said. 
 
 " You are not so severe, then, as that New Eng 
 land magistrate who ordered a man to the whipping 
 post for daring to ride for a doctor on the Lord s 
 day?" inquired Colonel Spottsgood, a quondam 
 magistrate of Virginia ; and every one laughed 
 every one except Miss Theky. 
 
 Miss Theky fixed her serious blue eyes upon 
 Colonel Spottsgood, who chanced to be her brother- 
 in-law as well as Virginia s quondam magistrate. 
 " The Jews held it unlawful even to stand on their 
 defence on the Sabbath," she said reproachfully. 
 
 " And were knocked on the head by Antiochus 
 in consequence," retorted her brother-in-law, unre- 
 pressed. " We are not Jews, Angelica." 
 
 " And on the other hand we are not Indians," 
 interposed Colonel Byrd. " They, like Robinson 
 Crusoe, do not know Sunday from any other 
 day." 
 
 " The lazy red man keeps the Sabbath every day
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 43 
 
 in the week," remarked Evelyn s cousin Daniel 
 with a droll smile that was characteristic of him. 
 
 "So they do, nephew," rejoined the Colonel, 
 laughing, " so far as industry is concerned. And 
 as for praying, the Indian prays as the philosopher 
 eats only when he has a stomach for it. But 
 speaking of eating, how do you like this whip-silla 
 bub that my wife offers you ? Do you not think, 
 gentleman, that t is very like a woman s conversa 
 tion, pretty but nothing to it ? " 
 
 At this the men laughed and the ladies pro 
 tested. 
 
 Evelyn, who delighted to answer her father s 
 sallies of wit with teasing, looked towards him, 
 smiling archly. " T is very unwise of you to speak 
 so, dear sir," she observed. " Now every one will 
 know that you are ruled by your wife for only 
 men who are ruled by their wives speak of women 
 in that petty fashion. Remember Parson Marij," 
 and she held up a warning finger. 
 
 This time it was the ladies who laughed. The 
 Parson Marij to whom Evelyn referred was known 
 throughout the neighborhood as a loud condemner 
 of women and the meekest of husbands as well. 
 
 " The gray mare is certainly the best horse in 
 the Marij family," remarked Lady Spottegood, 
 decisively. 
 
 " Yes, but what a creature ! " sighed Madam 
 Byrd, lifting her eyebrows with a look of refined 
 disgust.
 
 44 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 Miss Tbeky glanced anxiously at her hostess. 
 " You do not like her ? " she inquired. " She is 
 not a lady ? " 
 
 Mrs. Byrd s lip curled a bit, and Evelyn answered 
 with the epigrammatic terseness that she had in 
 herited from her father, and that was accompanied 
 with a languid grace of utterance that heightened 
 its effect. " Enough of a lady, I imagine, to run 
 into debt and be of no use in her household." 
 
 " She cannot run very far into debt," interposed 
 the rector, " for no one will trust her beyond the 
 limit of her husband s salary and that goes but a 
 short way, I assure you." 
 
 " What is her husband s salary ? " quickly in 
 quired several inquisitive voices. 
 
 " Sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco, I presume, 
 no more no less than what is legally allowed us 
 poor men of the cloth here in the colonies." The 
 rector smiled as he spoke, perhaps it was at the 
 thought that his good fortune had placed him in 
 a parish of rich and generous men, who gave more 
 than the law required. 
 
 " Humph," ejaculated Colonel Byrd, with dry- 
 humor, "at that rate, Parson Marij is paid no more 
 for his preaching than tis worth. But, friends," 
 he broke off, " do you realize we are gossiping 
 outrageously? Shall we not change the topic of 
 our discourse ? " 
 
 " By all means," said the rector. " Pray tell 
 me, Colonel Byrd, how came that grim little
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 45 
 
 Republican with the cocked hat into your gallery 
 of aristocrats ? " And he pointed to a portrait that 
 looked strangely out of place among the lords and 
 ladies, the earls and dukes, and all the other titled 
 persons that smiled or frowned or stared blankly 
 upon the beholder from their high places on West- 
 over s dining-room wall. 
 
 The attention of the company was turned to the 
 portrait, and Colonel Byrd surveyed it amusedly 
 as he related its story, telling how it was the like 
 ness of a conceited little clerk of the Virginia 
 House of Burgesses, who had presented it to him, 
 requesting that it might hang among his gallery 
 of peers, for whom the little clerk wished to show 
 his contempt by wearing his hat in their presence. 
 
 " I accepted the portrait," the Colonel declared ; 
 " but I told him it should hang among the peers as 
 a token that the clerk of the House of Burgesses 
 found the company too good for his keeping and 
 had put on his hat in the act of departure." 
 
 While the company were engaged in looking at 
 the portrait and laughing over the Colonel s story, 
 Evelyn stole a glance at the young man beside her. 
 He was not looking at the portrait nor laughing 
 over the story. His gaze and his thoughts too, it 
 appeared, had gone wandering. They were with 
 the fair world without, the smooth, terraced lawns, 
 the tall, waving trees, the fields of wheat and clover, 
 and the distant river view. T was a fair world 
 and no mistake, thought Evelyn, as her gaze fol-
 
 46 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 lowed his; but, she queried, were one really and 
 truly in love, would one care to stare so fixedly 
 upon it ? She drew a soft, fluttering sigh and her 
 face took on the pensive, sad expression that it 
 always wore when she was not smiling or talking. 
 
 As if arrested by that unspoken query the young 
 man looked towards her. "Did you speak, Eve 
 lyn ? " he asked. 
 
 "No," she answered, with lowered eyes and 
 faintly smiling lips. "But, had I spoken, you 
 would not have heard. You were very far away." 
 
 As she answered, it was as though her beauty 
 the delicately tinted cheeks, the dark drooping 
 lashes, the errant love lock escaped from waves of 
 chestnut hair, the fair white neck shining beneath 
 a thin blue cloud of gauze, the long, slender waist, 
 the exquisite grace and poise of the whole figure 
 it was as though all this cried out to the young 
 man for love and homage, such love and homage 
 as had been awarded it so generally in England, 
 where Mistress Evelyn Byrd, the rara avis as she 
 was called, had been the toast of the day at the 
 coffee houses and along the Mall. 
 
 A look of regret, almost of shame, crossed the 
 young man s face as he regarded her. "I crave 
 your pardon, Evelyn," he said. " I am poor com 
 pany for you. I am not Pope or Peterboro - 
 or Beau Nash or my lords of Oxford or of Ches 
 terfield. I am simply a Virginia planter with 
 naught of poetry or of brilliancy to recommend
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 47 
 
 me." He ended with his quiet, droll smile that, 
 for the moment, seemed to hint at sadness. 
 
 With languid ease Evelyn turned and surveyed 
 him, and her look might have meant many things. 
 "Simply a Virginia planter," she repeated after 
 him, slowly and meditatively, "with naught of 
 poetry or of brilliancy to recommend you. I 
 wonder what your friends find to admire in you, 
 cousin Daniel." 
 
 Dinner was at an end. The hostess and the rest 
 of the ladies were rising, leaving the gentlemen to 
 their wine. Evelyn rose with them, and as she 
 did so the filmy scarf that she wore about her 
 neck fluttered to the floor. 
 
 Gathering it up and folding it about her, her 
 cousin took occasion to whisper in her ear, " Where 
 shall I find you, Evelyn ? " 
 
 He spoke with a meaning glance, and Evelyn 
 raised inquiring brows. 
 
 " You and I have much to say to each other," he 
 added in parentheses, going with her to the door. 
 
 She turned on the threshold. " Yes," she said, 
 raising her eyelids slowly and looking with strange, 
 searching gaze into his face. " Let it be at our old 
 haunt, the honeysuckle gate." 
 
 With that she left him and crossed the hall to the 
 drawing-room on the further side. As she went 
 she heard some one of the men singing softly in a 
 teasing strain, and as if for her cousin s benefit, the 
 
 O 
 
 charming old love song, familiar then as now :
 
 48 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 " Drink to me only with thine eyes 
 
 And I will pledge with mine : 
 But leave a kiss within the cup 
 
 And I 11 not ask for wine : 
 The thirst that from the soul doth rise 
 
 Doth ask a drink divine, 
 But might I of Jove s nectar sup 
 
 I would not change for thine. " 
 
 4i Pretty song, eh, Custis ? " the man queried at 
 the end.; and there was a low laugh among the 
 men. 
 
 Evelyn listened, the faint, sad smile flitting 
 across her face. " The world will have it that Mr. 
 Daniel Parke Custis loves me," she mused. " But 
 the world is oft-times mistaken." 
 
 In the drawing-room, a long, cool room richly fur 
 nished and sweet with the perfume of many flowers, 
 Evelyn reposed herself among the cushions and took 
 part in the feminine chifc-chat going on about her. 
 She talked with Lady Spottsgood of the poultry 
 that her ladyship was raising ; of the ginseng, that 
 plant of scarlet berries, beneficial in coughs and 
 colds, that grew in abundance on the Spottsgood 
 plantation ; and of the deer which were great pets 
 with the Colonel, and which were allowed to 
 wander familiarly about the house to the destruc 
 tion of the Spottsgood china and glass, a destruc 
 tion that Lady Spottsgood appeared to regard with 
 a forbearance and good humor quite surprising in 
 a housewife. Of Miss Theky, Evelyn inquired 
 concerning Miss Theky s pet, the dog upon whom,
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 49 
 
 for want of a better object, it was hinted, Miss 
 Theky had bestowed her maiden affections. The 
 little spinster s eyes filled with tears as she an 
 swered. This day, which chanced to be her birth 
 day, was like to have been a day of mourning for 
 her, she said. Her little dog, who was of course 
 the sweetest and gentlest of creatures, had offended 
 her brother-in-law, Colonel Spottsgood, and in con 
 sequence by that same brother-in-law had been 
 condemned to die. However, she had entreated 
 most piteously for the life of her darling, and on 
 the plea that the day was her birthday and that 
 naught should be denied her, had obtained pardon 
 for him. 
 
 Evelyn attended to all that was said graciously 
 and sympathetically, as was her way. But when 
 Mrs. Byrd seated herself at the harpsichord and 
 the ladies gathered round to listen to her playing 
 and singing, Evelyn quietly left the drawing-room 
 and wandered out into the garden. The guests at 
 Westover that Sunday were old friends and neigh 
 bors, she stood on no ceremony with them, and 
 could go and come among them as she pleased. 
 
 Down by the " honeysuckle-gate," a summer 
 drowsiness prevailed. The sunlight flashed on the 
 river and sifted through the green branches over 
 head. The bees buzzed loudly and insistently, and 
 scents of clover and of garden flowers hung heavy 
 in the air. And on and about the gate itself and 
 the vine that twined over its intricate iron tracery
 
 50 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 the humming-birds, those exquisite fairies of the 
 feathered kind, flitted to and fro, drinking the nec 
 tar that flowed for them in the yellow flower cups. 
 
 With so soft and light a tread did Evelyn go 
 down the garden path that the young man, who 
 waited her coming at the gate, did not hear her. 
 She was obliged to speak to make her presence 
 known. 
 
 "I am come to keep my tryst," she said; and 
 when at sound of her voice the young man turned 
 she was standing only a few yards from him, 
 smiling, serene, perfect in her loveliness. 
 
 " At last," he cried. " You were long in- coming, 
 Evelyn; or, at least, to my impatient spirit it 
 seemed that you were long." He made a move to 
 go to her and would have bent to kiss her hand, 
 but the expression of her eyes stopped him. 
 
 "What have you and I to say to each other, 
 Daniel?" she asked, with the look of one who 
 wishes to dispense with trifling and to have to do 
 only in very earnest. 
 
 Immediately the young man dropped the cavalier 
 air that was rare with him, and looked into his 
 cousin s eyes gravely and questioningly. " Eve 
 lyn, when may I have my answer ? " he asked. 
 
 " T is ready for you here and now," she re 
 turned with a glimmering of her sad smile. 
 
 Still looking into her eyes, the young man cried, 
 " Nay, Evelyn, not that answer, I beg of you." And 
 when her expression did not change, "You were
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 51 
 
 different at dinner, Evelyn. You said you hoped 
 you might be kind." 
 
 " And what is being kind? " she answered. " Is 
 not saving you from making a marriage of con 
 venience being kind? " 
 
 Before her searching gaze the young man s 
 glance fell from her face to the silken folds of her 
 pale blue-green gown. " And do you not think 
 that I love you, Evelyn? "he asked in lowered 
 voice. 
 
 " As a cousin, as an old friend, yes, perhaps ; but, 
 Daniel, you are capable of loving a woman, the 
 woman, better than that." 
 
 The young man lifted his glance from the blue- 
 green gown to the sad, pensive face, and above to 
 the crescent of moonstones that glistened like a 
 crescent of tears on the white forehead. " It may 
 be that you are right, Evelyn," he said. " Yet, I 
 ask you, while we were happy in one another s 
 companionship, might not the greater love come in 
 time ? " 
 
 Evelyn shook her head. " We have been happy 
 in one another s companionship a long while, our 
 whole lives," she answered, " and the greater love 
 has not come." As she spoke, she drew the soft, 
 fluttering sigh that had escaped her once before 
 that day, and looked away with a weariness of 
 expression. 
 
 The sigh and the expression had the appearance 
 of symbols of ennui. " I bore you," said young
 
 52 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 Custis, with a suggestion of hauteur. " I see that 
 you are not to be persuaded. I will desist from 
 further argument," and he too looked away. 
 
 A moment later Evelyn s slender hand was laid 
 upon the young man s ruffled sleeve. " Let us 
 not quarrel, Daniel," she said, looking into his face 
 with a smile brighter than any she had yet given 
 him that afternoon at the honeysuckle gate. 
 " We have been good friends always, we must 
 not change now. We must remain good friends ; 
 for we shall have need of one another s friendship, 
 shall we not, when our fathers learn of our decision 
 and scold us roundly for spoiling the project they 
 have so long cherished for us? " and she ended with 
 her thin, silvery laugh. 
 
 Under the influence of the smile, the laugh, the 
 words, and the sweet mood that prompted them, 
 the young man s hauteur quickly and completely 
 vanished. He regarded Evelyn with a look such 
 as that with which a man might regard a sister of 
 whom he was both fond and proud ; a look which, 
 had a woman loved him, must have pained while it 
 pleased. 
 
 " Quarrel with you, Evelyn? " he exclaimed heart 
 ily. " One would not if one could. You are too 
 much the perfect lady to make it possible for any 
 one to quarrel with you." He glanced away to 
 the river and then back to the girl s face, " And, 
 Evelyn," he said, " if I may not be your lover, I 
 will be your friend, always your friend, more than
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 53 
 
 ever your friend. And indeed I fancy I shall 
 never come to be another woman s lover so long as 
 I may keep your friend." 
 
 " So you will think, perhaps, until you come to 
 be that other woman s lover," answered Evelyn, 
 and as she spoke her eyes were hidden beneath 
 the shadow of her lashes. Then she lifted her 
 glance, and with a showing of her bright smile 
 which had yet a suggestion of her sad smile, leaning 
 against the gate, she surveyed her cousin musingly. 
 " I wonder what she will be like," she queried. 
 " T would be interesting to hazard a guess." 
 
 Led by her graceful guidance, the young man 
 fell easily in with her half-trifling mood. He 
 leaned upon the gate beside her, and answered her 
 smile with one of his. " Pray do," he exclaimed. 
 " Your guess cannot fail to be of interest to him 
 for whom you guess." 
 
 Evelyn grew thoughtful and was silent for a 
 while. Then she said, "She will be very unlike 
 me and better suited to you and your plantation 
 home. Like the clovers growing in the meadow 
 yonder, her loveliness will be fresh, simple, sturdy, 
 while I, who am more like the roses climbing over 
 the trellis here beside us, am what I am only be 
 cause of excessive pruning and care." 
 
 "Evelyn, you underrate your own inherent 
 charm," interposed the young man. 
 
 But Evelyn shook her head. Still leaning on 
 the gate and resting her chin upon her hand, she
 
 54 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 looked off to the river and the further shore where 
 the scene was one of a wild, woodland beauty, a 
 scene strangely and yet enchantingly in contrast 
 with the girl herself, who was so delicate, so refined, 
 so exquisite, so very nearly artificial in the perfec 
 tion of all arts and graces. 
 
 Young Custis studied her with his eyes, and 
 after a pause, in low, meditating tone, he remarked, 
 " Evelyn, I wonder if you will ever love." 
 
 A shadow as of sudden pain crossed Evelyn s 
 face. She lifted her head and without looking at 
 her cousin, she queried, " Have we not talked of 
 love enough for one day ? I confess I grow some 
 what weary of the subject," and then, with a glance 
 over her shoulder, " And tell me, who may these 
 gentlemen be coming towards us down the garden 
 path." 
 
 The young man turned and peered up through 
 the avenue of trees, to where, with the trees above 
 them and about them, and the red fagade of the 
 house a glimmer through the green, two gentlemen, 
 alike as to periwigged heads, frilled waistcoats, and 
 ruffled sleeves, walked arm in arm together, talking 
 and laughing in congenial, friendly fashion. 
 
 " They are our fathers, Evelyn," answered the 
 young man ; and with a long-drawn sigh and a hint 
 of his droll smile he added dryly, " I 11 warrant 
 they 11 not laugh so heartily when once they learn 
 of our decision." 
 
 Evelyn echoed his sigh with one of her soft, flut-
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 55 
 
 tering ones, and then remarked half playfully, half 
 seriously, " The poor dear sirs ! Let us break it 
 to them as gently as we can." 
 
 As the two gentlemen drew near the honeysuckle 
 gate, Colonel Byrd was heard declaring, " I do not 
 believe that we would ever find the raising and ex 
 portation of hemp of profit to us. Labor is so 
 much dearer here than in Riga and other hemp- 
 raising countries of the East, and freight is so 
 much higher. The price that makes the hemp- 
 raisers of the East rich would ruin us. And even 
 if this was not so, and if the king would buy our 
 hemp at a paying price, the merchants would man 
 age to load our hemp with so many charges that 
 they would run away with the greater part of the 
 profit. Ours would be the case of the poor fishing- 
 hawk upon whom the bald eagle pounces down and 
 robs of the fish which the hawk has been at such 
 pains to catch." And then observing his daughter 
 and young Custis, the Colonel broke off, "But 
 speaking of home products, here, if I mistake not, 
 are some things of our own raising are not these 
 our son and daughter, brother Custis?" 
 
 "Aye," returned the other, "and let us hope 
 they will repay the care and cost that we have put 
 upon them better than would the hemp." 
 
 Both fathers began a jesting laugh that ended 
 suddenly at sight of the sober faces before them. 
 
 "Well," exclaimed the elder Custis, after a 
 pause, " we do not meet with a very warm recep-
 
 56 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 tion; " and Colonel Byrd declared, " By their looks 
 they seem to bid us go. Come, let us stay no 
 longer in a company where we are not appre 
 ciated." The two gentlemen made a move to 
 pass through the gate and out upon the river 
 road. 
 
 Evelyn laid a detaining hand upon her father s 
 sleeve, and Daniel, after glancing at the girl who 
 stood silent with downcast eyes, waiting for him 
 to speak, drew himself together and said, sturdily, 
 " Gentlemen, you find us dull and mute. T is 
 because we dread to speak and tell you something 
 that will disappoint you, that will shatter a hope 
 that you have cherished for us a long while." 
 
 At the young man s words, a look of understand 
 ing, of dark, frowning understanding, appeared on 
 the faces of the two elder men. Colonel Byrd 
 fixed a grave gaze upon his daughter, and Colonel 
 Custis turned to his son, inquiringly sharply, 
 " How now, sirrah, have you been bungling mat 
 ters ? " 
 
 At this Evelyn raised her eyes and addressed 
 herself to Colonel Custis. "There has been no 
 bungling, uncle," she said. " Your son has made 
 his suit to me like a gentleman, and as you would 
 wish to have him." 
 
 " And you have refused it, Evelyn ? " questioned 
 her father ; " and on what ground, may I ask ? " 
 
 " His love is not of the sort to satisfy me," she 
 answered with a touch of pride.
 
 "EVELYN, I WONDER IF YOU WILL EVER LOVE."
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 57 
 
 Colonel Byrd s arched brows went upward, seem 
 ing to inquire, " Is there any love under the sun 
 that can satisfy you ? " 
 
 Colonel Custis scowled, uttered a low-voiced, in 
 articulate imprecation, and turned on his heel, 
 motioning his son to follow ; and as the two started 
 up the path together, he called back over his 
 shoulder, " Since t is the girl who balks, brother 
 Byrd, I have nothing to say. I have long since 
 learned the futility of all attempt at reason or 
 argument upon a woman." 
 
 Left alone, Evelyn and her father stood for a few 
 moments in silence, Evelyn leaning against the 
 gate, her eyes downcast, and the Colonel regarding 
 her with a look in which anger and pride, affection 
 and sarcasm blended. 
 
 Pride and sarcasm were predominant, when at 
 length the Colonel remarked : " Evelyn, my love, 
 is it your ambition to break the hearts of all the 
 men on both sides of the Atlantic ? " 
 
 Evelyn lifted her eyes. " Don t," she said. 
 
 Given a better view of her face, for the first time 
 her father observed that she was very pale, and that 
 her eyes shone brilliantly like the eyes of one in 
 pain. He took her by the hand and drew her nearer 
 to him. " Evelyn, my little girl," he cried, " can 
 it be that you love this fellow, this cousin of yours ? 
 I thought that it was Peterboro you loved. Now I 
 am at a loss to know who it is." 
 
 Evelyn gently took away her hand and turned
 
 58 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 from him. " Don t ask me," she said, " for I can 
 not tell you, not even you. My love has been a 
 secret a long while. Let it remain a secret, as much 
 a secret as that which the trees are forever whisper 
 ing over our heads. And who can tell ? perhaps 
 in time my secret may become a part of that same 
 eternal secret ! " 
 
 She ended with a smile sadder than any that had 
 gone before ; and then, the light of quiet laughter 
 breaking through the trouble in her eyes, she leaned 
 against her father s arm and looked up into his 
 face. " Come, sir," she ordered, " let us not forget 
 our guests. The gentlemen, I know, are already 
 pining for another bottle of your Canary wine, and 
 the ladies, I 11 be bound, are at this very minute 
 peering at us from the drawing-room windows, jeal 
 ous of me, no doubt. Come, let us delay no longer, 
 lest we bring ourselves into disfavor with them 
 all." 
 
 Mistress Evelyn still holds court. Her portrait 
 hangs on the walls of Brandon, on the lower James, 
 not far from her old home ; and in immortal beauty 
 and with the same pensive smile upon her face, the 
 fair scion of Westover continues to win hearts. 
 Nor is that all. In Westover, the old home itself, 
 on winter nights, when the Yule log burns on the 
 hearth, casting grotesque shadows in the twilight, 
 the tap, tap, tap of her slippers may be heard, and 
 her soft, fluttering sigh, as her lady-like ghost
 
 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 59 
 
 gently steals through the long corridors and up the 
 broad stairs. 
 
 Evelyn died of love, tradition says, but does any 
 one know for love of whom she died? Was it 
 Peterboro she loved, that aged gallant of Queen 
 Anne s court, and one of the shrewdest and wittiest 
 of that shrewd and witty day ? Peterboro married 
 the singer Anastasia Robinson and died the hardy 
 reprobate that he had lived, " laughing and mock 
 ing in the intervals of. agonizing pain and entertain 
 ing a company of ten at dinner immediately before 
 the end." Or was it her cousin Daniel Custis that 
 Evelyn loved, him with whom it was designed by 
 their proud and wealthy fathers that she should 
 make a marriage of convenience, thus uniting two 
 aristocratic families and two fine estates ? Daniel 
 Custis married a woman of just such fresh, simple, 
 and sturdy loveliness as Evelyn had prophesied 
 that she would be, little Patsy Dandridge, she who 
 later in life became world-famous as the wife of 
 George Washington ; and he died, this Daniel 
 Custis, quietly and peacefully as he had lived, leav 
 ing behind him the record of a pure, upright, and 
 industrious life. Or was it neither of these men, 
 Peterboro or Custis, that Evelyn loved, but instead 
 some man who, nameless in history, can be known 
 merely as an imaginary creation ? We cannot say. 
 We only know that Evelyn never married, and 
 that while still young and beautiful she faded 
 broken-hearted to the grave.
 
 60 THE SECRET OF THE TREES. 
 
 In the garden of Westover Evelyn lies sleeping, 
 a melancholy inscription upon her tomb, and the 
 oaks that whisper over her grave are forever telling 
 and yet never telling the secret which, tightly 
 locked in her heart, died with her and now lives 
 only as a part of the eternal secret of the trees.
 
 IV. 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 SUBEIAGE slept late the morning follow 
 ing the Governor s ball. As she took her first peep 
 at day through the shutters that darkened her room, 
 she saw that the sun was high in the heavens and 
 shedding a clear, warm radiance upon the little city 
 outspread before her view. Conspicuous in the 
 morning brightness were the steeples of King s 
 Chapel and of the Old South Meeting-house, the 
 English colors flying from the province house, the 
 new and imposing hall that the munificent Mr. 
 Faneuil had just bestowed upon the city, and the 
 three peaks of Beacon Hill that marked the one 
 end of colonial Boston. 
 
 Agnes turned from the window with what was 
 nearer a sigh than a yawn, as she reflected on the 
 lateness of the hour. It used not to be so in the 
 old days at Marblehead, she thought. Then she 
 had been up with the birds and in time to see the 
 first hint of morning flushing sky and ocean. A 
 feeling of freshness and of vigor had come with 
 the birth of each new day, and her burden of 
 poverty and toil had rested lightly on her strong, 
 supple shoulders. Now the burden had slipped 
 
 61
 
 62 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 from her shoulders, she had undergone a change 
 like that of the butterfly, she was a " grand " lady. 
 She could lie sleeping while the sun went on its 
 course unattended. She needed only to air her 
 pretty wings in the sunshine and to sip honey from 
 the flowers, and her day s work was done. But 
 was she any the more fortunate in her butterfly 
 state, she wondered, than when she had grubbed, 
 a dingy little worm in the dust? 
 
 She looked at the gown of cream-colored silk, 
 the fair creation that had won the admiration of 
 the men and the envy of the women at the ball. 
 It was lying carelessly upon a chair, just as she 
 had left it the night before. She looked at the 
 roses that had nodded from among her dark curls 
 and of which it had been whispered that, beautiful 
 as they were, they could not match the roses in 
 her cheeks. They were withering on her dressing- 
 table in the midst of jewel-box and powder-puff, 
 of mirror, fan, and gloves. She looked at her 
 reflection in the mirror, her dark, radiant loveli 
 ness, and she recalled certain words that she had 
 overheard when, in the cream-colored gown and 
 with the roses in her hair, leaning on her guardian s 
 arm and happy in his approving smile, she had 
 stood on the threshold of the Governor s ball-room 
 and the world therein assembled a world which 
 in a small provincial way so perfectly reproduced 
 the fashion, pride, and courtly consequence of the 
 world across the sea.
 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 63 
 
 "What beauty!" one of colonial Boston s gal 
 lants had exclaimed, and Agnes had been forced 
 to blush, so long and admiring had been his gaze. 
 
 "Yes," an aristocratic dame had answered, in 
 coolly critical tone, " but it may prove her undoing." 
 
 And Agnes, poor girl, had understood the dark 
 hint. As a butterfly, she was learning to under 
 stand much of which, as a dingy little worm, she 
 had never dreamed, and the new understanding 
 was not wholly beautiful. 
 
 Agnes ate her breakfast with a preoccupied air 
 that morning, watered her flowers with less of love 
 than she had ever before shown them, and sat 
 down to her harpsichord and went through her ex 
 ercises in a mechanical way that proved her heart 
 was not in her playing. She was curled up among 
 the cushions in the window-seat of her parlor, her 
 own special parlor in the boarding-house that 
 served as her temporary home, and was reading 
 " Pamela," the tale that had so often charmed her 
 and moved her to tears, but for which she had only 
 a half interest that morning, when a knock, that 
 was apologetic and autocratic at the same time, 
 announced her tutor. 
 
 With a cool nod, Agnes received the worthy 
 Mr. Peter Pelham, he who had recently returned 
 from foreign parts with a store of foreign learning, 
 grace, and art which it was his business to impart 
 at a high rate of interest to the rising generation 
 of Boston s elect. And while Mr. Pelham was
 
 64 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 laying aside his walking-stick and his three-cor 
 nered hat and carefully smoothing his immaculate 
 white neck-band and wrist-bands, Agnes threw 
 down her book and rose slowly to drop the courtesy 
 that came, as a somewhat tardy answer, to the pro 
 found bow which her tutor had made upon enter 
 ing. 
 
 " Good-day to you, Mr. Pelham," she remarked, 
 looking not at him, but out of the window. " Tis 
 a pity you have put yourself to the trouble of 
 coming this morning. I shall not take any lesson 
 to-day." 
 
 Mr. Pelham lifted his eyes with an autocratic 
 look that seemed to say, " What new whimsey is 
 this ? " But Agnes was beyond the age that trem 
 bles at the schoolmaster, and Mr. Pelham s eyes 
 fell to the floor apologetically. " This will make 
 two lessons within a week that you have missed, 
 Miss Surriage," he observed, not without the in 
 sistent note of the pedagogue. " You cannot ex 
 pect to progress very rapidly in your music at such 
 a rate." 
 
 Agnes made a motion of impatience and petu- 
 lancy. " You know that I can never play when I 
 am not in the mood for playing," she retorted. 
 
 Mr. Pelham shrugged his shoulders and, with 
 the manner of one who yields to a spoiled child, 
 he went to take up the walking-stick and hat that 
 he had laid aside. 
 
 Agnes turned to him quickly. " Stay a moment,
 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 65 
 
 Mr. Pelham," she said. " I want to talk to you, 
 to ask you some questions." 
 
 She seated herself beside a pretty little slim- 
 legged, highly polished table of a style of furniture 
 very much in vogue at that date in colonial Boston, 
 and motioned for him to take the seat on the further 
 side. 
 
 On the table between them, and almost hiding 
 them from each other, stood a tall vase filled with 
 roses red roses, such as those which had nodded 
 from Agnes dark curls at the ball the night be 
 fore. Agnes drew one of the roses from the vase 
 and began toying with it upon the table. 
 
 "Mr. Pelham," she began, "you are a very wise 
 man you have travelled and read and studied 
 you know a great deal about a great many things." 
 She spoke part assertively, part inquiringly, and 
 paused as if desiring a confirmation of her state 
 ment. 
 
 The schoolmaster dropped his eyes in apologetic 
 fashion, but a smile of pedagogic vanity played 
 about his mouth. "I trust that I do not shame 
 the dignity of my calling," he replied, with a little 
 deprecatory cough. 
 
 Agnes, busy with her own thoughts, seemed only 
 half to heed his answer. There was wistfulness in 
 her look, as though she were hoping to sound un 
 tried depths of knowledge in the worthy Mr. Pel- 
 ham s scholarly brain. "I am learning a lesson 
 outside of my books and my music and dancing,"
 
 66 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 she said. " I suppose one should call it the lesson 
 of life. I am learning the meaning of rank and 
 blood and title. I am learning that a stamp of 
 the crown upon a piece of paper is as sacred as 
 one s honor, that a coach with armorial bearings 
 can carry one through the world more proudly than 
 can virtue and justice and prudence, and that the 
 line that divides those who have the proper stamp 
 on their paper and the proper symbols on their 
 coach from those who have not is more rigid, more 
 binding, more impassable than the line that divides 
 the good from the bad. Do I read my lesson 
 aright, Mr. Pelham, or do I read it crookedly? 
 And if I read it aright and t is true what I have 
 said, what is it that has turned the world topsy 
 turvy?" The wistf ulness of her look was intense 
 as she glanced past the roses to the school-teacher. 
 Mr. Pelham answered the look with one of supe 
 rior wisdom. Yet, in spite of his look of superior 
 wisdom, it is probable that he knew very little of 
 what was troubling the girl. Of the facts of her 
 history he was not ignorant. He knew as did the 
 rest of colonial Boston that she was of low birth (of 
 low birth, that is, as interpreted by the aristocrats 
 of the day), that her parents were poor, hard-work 
 ing fisher-folks, and that she herself had been a scrub 
 girl at the Fountain Inn of Marblehead and had 
 thence been lifted by the generous hand of Bos 
 ton s young collector, Mr. Harry Frankland, who 
 had appointed himself her guardian, to the place
 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 67 
 
 she now occupied, that of a well-bred, well-edu 
 cated, thoroughly refined and cultivated lady. 
 Mr. Pelham knew too what all of colonial Boston 
 did not know, for Agnes was of a modest, retiring 
 disposition, that she was a girl of unusual talents 
 and mental aptitude. In music, reading, and draw 
 ing she had shown quite remarkable proficiency, 
 and she was, indeed, the most creditable of all his 
 pupils. 
 
 All this Mr. Pelham knew. But he did not 
 know for how could he, unimaginative, narrow- 
 minded pedant that he was the doubts and ques 
 tionings, the regrets, the fears and longings that 
 had come with the new position, the battlings of 
 heart and conscience that were close at hand. 
 
 Yet, although he did not know, Mr. Pelham s 
 look of superior wisdom never faltered, and with a 
 patronizing smile he answered, " You are young, 
 Miss Surriage, and t is the fault of youth to cry- 
 out against the injustices of the world. If you had 
 lived as long as I, you would know that the world 
 is not turned topsy-turvy, but continues to revolve, 
 an orderly and well-regulated world in its accus 
 tomed orbit; that every station in life, however 
 humble, has its own uses and advantages ; and that 
 virtue, though t is not always so speedily recog 
 nized as the stamp on the paper and the symbol 
 on the coach, is nevertheless always virtue and as 
 such is respected if not according to its merit, at 
 least according to its wont."
 
 68 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 The schoolmaster s words had a very correct, 
 oracular ring, but they failed to satisfy Agnes. 
 She put up her hand to her forehead. " I see you 
 do not understand," she said. Then she rose. 
 " But I keep you from your business, Mr. Pelham," 
 she continued. " I will not detain you longer in 
 talk that is of no moment. Go to your other pupils. 
 They will stay within the prescribed school-room 
 limits of books, music, and dancing. They will 
 not take to playing truant as I have done in a tan 
 gle of foolish questions. Good-day to you, Mr. 
 Pelham," and she ended with a low, graceful cour 
 tesy which Mr. Pelham himself had taught her 
 and which was the one approved by the fashionable 
 Boston of the day. 
 
 There was something authoritative, almost 
 queenly about the girl. Indeed, those who had 
 known her in the old days would have found it 
 hard to identify the poor fisher-maid of Marblehead 
 with this dark beauty of the drawing-room who 
 spread her rustling, brocaded skirts in such a regal 
 fashion and addressed the schoolmaster with a sug 
 gestion of hauteur in voice and manner. 
 
 The schoolmaster had risen too, and stood look 
 ing at her rather amazedly. To him she was then, 
 as ever, an enigma written in a language of which, 
 in spite of his extensive linguistic learning, he had 
 no knowledge. In his ignorance he took refuge in 
 a sarcastic smile. " Good-day to you, Miss Sur- 
 riage," he returned. " Since I can be of no further
 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 69 
 
 service to you I will, as you suggest, take my 
 leave." He leisurely gathered up hat and walking- 
 stick, and was in the act of departure. On the 
 threshold of the door he turned. " When next I 
 call, Miss Surriage, I trust that I shall find you in 
 the mood for a music lesson," and he elaborately 
 bowed himself out of the room. 
 
 When he was gone Agnes bowed as he had 
 bowed, and with a perfect mimicry of his voice 
 and manner echoed his suave " Good-day to you, 
 Miss Surriage, and when next I call I trust that I 
 shall find you in the mood for a music lesson." 
 Then she broke into a low laugh that was not very 
 hearty. He who was now so smilingly patroniz 
 ing, she thought, would be among the first to point 
 the finger of shame at her, if ever she should lose 
 her way upon the straight and narrow path and 
 wander from it. She could easily fancy him frown 
 ing her down, and with him her other tutors and her 
 schoolmates, those gentle, high-born maidens, who 
 had always been her friends rather half-heartedly, 
 and had praised her, her work, her music, her 
 reading, and her drawing, with reservations, remem 
 bering the story of her parentage and toil, and 
 regarding her with eyes of curious wonder. 
 
 And it was not only her school world that she 
 pictured frowning her down. Even more vividly 
 she saw herself condemned to social ostracism by 
 the world of fashion, the Amorys and Apthorps, 
 the Hutchinsons, Prices, Shiiieys, and Auchmutys,
 
 70 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 those men and women who, attired in imported 
 velvets, silks, and satins, inhabited the north or 
 court end of the city; who worshipped at King s 
 Chapel, the Episcopal church of Puritan Boston ; 
 who held the money, offices, and power of the 
 colony; who were allied to the first families of 
 England, and who represented rank and royalty in 
 the newfound Western home. 
 
 In spite of its historic prettiness and quaintness, 
 that little, old-time, provincial world of fashion 
 was a narrow, trivial sort of world. Distinct from 
 the sturdier Puritan stratum of Boston society, and 
 not yet grown to a sufficient manhood to resent the 
 tyranny of the mother country, it scrupulously fol 
 lowed the follies as the fashions of the world across 
 the sea. It was a proud, insolent, all-regal world, 
 and to the girl who had come thither, fresh from 
 her seaside home, and with a spirit as free as the 
 air she had breathed and as broad as the ocean view 
 upon which she had gazed as a child, it oft-times 
 proved a prison. 
 
 But though to Agnes this world was oft-times a 
 prison, to the world she was a novelty, something 
 to interest it, to set its gossip-loving tongue to 
 wagging. Therefore she found herself petted, 
 flattered, courted, with reservations to be sure such 
 as those withheld by her schoolmates, but with a 
 genuine enthusiasm. And while Agnes did not at 
 all depend for her happiness upon such benefits as 
 this petty little world could offer, she could not
 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 71 
 
 endure the thought, so galling to a proud, sensitive 
 nature, that this same petty little world might, upon 
 provocation, turn its back upon her and leave her 
 to endure the daily torture of social ignominy. 
 
 Yet even more than the frowns of her school 
 world and the world of fashion, Agnes dreaded the 
 accusations of her own conscience and the shame 
 that, should she take a step unsanctioned by re 
 ligion, would be put upon her by her old friends, 
 those rough but honest fisher-folk of Marblehead. 
 At thought of those old friends and especially at 
 thought of her parents and her younger brothers 
 and sisters, who were so admiring, almost reverential, 
 in their love for her, Agnes threw herself upon the 
 window seat of her parlor, her parlor that in spite 
 of its every luxury could not bring happiness, and 
 gave way to a storm of passionate weeping. 
 
 Yet even while she wept, her heart cried to 
 Frankland, to him whom she had been taught to 
 call her guardian, who had taken her from the 
 humble home where she had known no better than 
 to be happy, and raised her to her present pinnacle 
 of genteel grandeur, who was the cause of all her 
 doubts and questionings and heart-breaking regrets, 
 but whom, alas for her peace of mind and her future 
 welfare, she loved in a measure that could out 
 weigh the doubts and questionings and heart 
 breaking regrets, the dazzling though prison-like 
 world of fashion and the old loves and the old life 
 as well. She knew that there were thorns in the
 
 72 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 crown he offered her, thorns and nettles that would 
 scratch and sting and smirch her brow, but she 
 could almost forget the thorns and nettles, she 
 thought, while wearing those bright blossoms that 
 made the crown beautiful. Her heart told her that 
 it was not his fault that the thorns and nettles were 
 there, not his fault that he could not marry her, but 
 must sacrifice his honorable and generous impulses 
 to the impassable barriers of rank, family, and 
 ancestral pride. The world was turned topsy-turvy 
 and her own vision of right and wrong had become 
 blurred, but she could not blame him that these 
 things were so. 
 
 He was her friend, as from the first so to the 
 last, she was sure of that, her friend certain to 
 remain true when the world frowned and one by 
 one other friends fell from her. He was not of the 
 class who love lightly and forget. He was a brave, 
 noble, knightly soul. This she knew as she knew 
 her catechism and her Lord s prayer. Once she 
 had believed him of the stuff of which fairy tales 
 are woven ; but that was when, a gold-laced, berib- 
 boned, beruffled, and bewigged gentleman, he had 
 flashed upon her toilsome horizon at the Fountain 
 Inn where, in a pool of soap-suds, she had knelt 
 scrubbing the tavern floor ; and he had smiled upon 
 her and looked with pity on her bare feet and 
 dropped into her hand the gold coin that was to 
 buy her first pair of shoes. Of course that had 
 happened long ago, had become a part of a past
 
 m 
 
 THUS THE TRAGIC 
 
 BATTLE OF HER YOUNG LIFE WAS FOUGHT.
 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 73 
 
 existence, and she had lived to see her godlike 
 hero descend from his pedestal and mingle a man 
 with other men. Yet he had been always so gen 
 erous, so courtly, and so kind, that there still hung 
 about him a reminiscence of the divine halo. It 
 was not so much that he had grown less godly as 
 that he had grown more human. And when she 
 thought of the night before, of the ball, and re 
 membered his touch on her hair and his kiss, she 
 knew not whether she liked it better or not so well 
 that her god had become so very much a man. 
 
 And the crown he offered her, should she put it 
 from her or should she stoop to receive it ? Should 
 she give up him who was sun, moon, and stars to 
 her, or those other little worlds which were but a 
 dark corner of the universe in comparison, but 
 which, nevertheless, threatened to grow great with 
 flashings of angry light and rumblings as of dire 
 earthquakes ? The need and the impossibility of 
 answer brought on a fresh storm of weeping. 
 Thus, with sad waverings and yearnings, and trials 
 of the spirit, and with piteous gropings for the 
 light, the tragic battle of her young life was fought. 
 
 The morning wore away and at length the noise 
 of footsteps upon the flagstone walk beneath the 
 window, growing more frequent, told that the 
 business world was returning home from Town 
 House and Custom House, Province House and 
 Market, for the recreating quiet of the noon hour 
 and for dinner.
 
 74 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 Agnes was calm again. She had bathed her 
 eyes and smoothed her tumbled hair and was sit 
 ting curled up among the cushions of her window 
 seat once more. She had, however, abandoned all 
 pretence of reading. " Pamela " lay face downward 
 on the floor, telling a tale other than that which 
 had proceeded from the wonder-working brain of 
 the renowned Mr. Richardson. 
 
 The sound of jest and laughter from a merry 
 group of men passing below came up to Agnes. 
 And just beneath her window, some one of the 
 group loitering behind, as the rest went on down 
 the street, was heard calling after them, " At the 
 Orange Tree, six o clock to-night, gentlemen. 
 Do not fail. We must give the Captain a rousing 
 welcome and show him how handsomely we do 
 things here in the provinces." 
 
 Agnes scarcely heard the answering cheer and 
 laugh. At sound of the voice, strong, clear, and 
 ringing, that of a healthy, happy manhood, a glad 
 light more eloquent than a smile had lighted her 
 face. She opened the door hospitably and with 
 drew to the recess of the window, and stood there, 
 with her back to the door, joyously anticipating 
 and yet dreading the coming interview. 
 
 A moment more and Mr. Harry Frankland stood 
 on the threshold. He was very fine that morning 
 in powdered wig and gold lace coat, brocaded 
 vest, ruffled sleeves, and silver shoe-buckles. He 
 looked what in truth he was, a handsome, brave,
 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 75 
 
 and gallant gentleman. His three-cornered hat 
 was raised to his heart in the act of bowing, and a 
 pleased, anticipatory smile parted his lips, as he 
 glanced at the picture framed in the window, the 
 slender, graceful figure in the pale corn-colored 
 gown against the rich blue damask of the hang 
 ings. 
 
 Agnes turned, the glad light still on her face, 
 and Frankland went forward and took her hands in 
 his, and looked with long, lover-like gaze into her 
 eyes. But he did not kiss her ; a kiss was still a 
 sacred thing between them, not to be given or 
 taken lightly. Nor did they speak for a moment. 
 
 They sat down side by side upon the window-seat, 
 and then Frankland said, " I could not go by with 
 out stopping to see how you had survived the ball. 
 Your dissipations have not robbed you of your 
 beauty, little lady. I know not whether I like you 
 better as you were last night in the ball gown, with 
 the paint and powder, the jewels and the flowers, 
 and amid the bright, laughing, dancing world, or as 
 I find you now in the dimness and quiet of your 
 own parlor, clothed in this simple morning gown, 
 your own dark loveliness your one jewel." 
 
 " I am better as I am," Agnes answered quietly, 
 modestly, as though disclaiming all right to the 
 magnificence of the ballroom. 
 
 " Yes," declared her companion, " you are better 
 as you are, I vow ; for you are alone, I may have 
 you to myself. Last night you were beset by a
 
 76 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 host of eager young gallants and I, your old guard 
 ian, was quite pushed to the wall." 
 
 Agnes must smile at that. Her " old guardian," 
 as it chanced, was not yet turned of thirty. Indeed, 
 had it not been for the full white wig that he wore 
 and that hid his bonny brown hair, with his fresh 
 English complexion and his laughter-haunted eyes, 
 one might have deemed him a veritable boy. 
 
 Agnes shook her head reprovingly at him. " An 
 old guardian," she remarked, " would know better 
 than to speak in such flattering terms to his young 
 ward. You are like to spoil me, sir. Pray let us 
 change this very personal topic. Tell me, what is 
 the news about town to-day ? " 
 
 At that Frankland began talking enthusiastically 
 of the arrival in Boston of his brother, the popular 
 young commander of the English frigate " Rose," 
 and of the entertainments that were being set on 
 foot in his honor ; of the dinner that was to begin 
 them and was to be given by himself that evening 
 at the Orange Tree Inn, and to which the elect of 
 Boston s young men were bidden. 
 
 Like all his friends at home, Frankland declared 
 laughingly, the Captain imagined the provinces a 
 wilderness, and believed that he (Mr. Harry Frank- 
 land) must be bereft of his senses, that he could 
 remain contented in them so long. He was deter 
 mined the Captain should undergo a change of 
 mind before sailing away, should carry back a 
 good report to England. He turned proudly to
 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 77 
 
 Agnes. Might he bring his brother to see her? 
 His brother must know what a rare beautiful 
 flower was blooming in these Arcadian wilds. 
 
 Agnes looked sadly away. Frankland s mention 
 of his brother renewed that trouble of the spirit 
 which his own presence had for a moment dis 
 pelled. To her, this brother stood for the Frank- 
 land family and for the obstacles that family would 
 raise in opposition to a marriage between Mr. 
 Harry Frankland and herself obstacles such as 
 rank, fortune, and a future baronetcy, which things, 
 alas, in the worldly world where their lot was cast, 
 counted for more than natural dictates of the heart 
 and manly honor. 
 
 Frankland was quick to detect the girl s change 
 of mood and expression. "Why do you sigh, 
 child?" he asked anxiously. "Do you not like 
 my praises ? " 
 
 " If only they were that," she answered, " praises 
 to a child. But I am no longer a child and you 
 no longer praise me as a child. I am learning and 
 you are helping to teach me the lesson of sorrow 
 that makes me a woman." 
 
 Frankland took her hand in his and began strok 
 ing it tenderly. Quick-coming shadows had chased 
 away the laughter from his eyes. " I teach you 
 sorrow, Agnes, God forgive me! " he murmured 
 in a tone of sharp contrition. 
 
 "I have been thinking of home," continued 
 A^nes, with her eyes fixed as if on imaginary pict-
 
 78 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 ures, "and of my childhood days and of the old 
 friends." 
 
 Still stroking her hand, " You love them, Agnes, 
 I know," said Frankland ; and then after an elo 
 quent little pause, " Better than me ? " he asked. 
 
 Her answer was a quick pressure of the hand 
 and a look more expressive than words. She 
 rose abruptly, abruptness was a part of her in 
 tense, impulsive nature, walked the length of 
 the room and back, while Frankland followed her 
 compassionately with his eyes, and stood before him 
 regarding him with a look of piteous appeal. 
 
 " Why were you born a gentleman ? " she asked 
 helplessly ; " or why was not I born a lady ? " 
 
 Frankland took her hands, kissed them, and 
 looked up, sorrowing with her and for her, into her 
 face. " Or why, dear love, were we not born in 
 that golden age," he said, with a sadly tender^ 
 sadly playful smile, "before the careless nymph 
 Pandora opened her box and let escape pride, 
 insolence, vainglory, and all those other ills that 
 have made this world uninhabitable for two loving 
 hearts such as ours ? " 
 
 With a look of piteous appeal still in her eyes 
 and in the same helpless tone Agnes continued, 
 " What shall we do ? Whither shall we turn ? Oh, 
 we are like two children going hand in hand into a 
 dark room, knowing not where to look for light 
 nor how we may come out." 
 
 Her words, her tone, and, more than these, the
 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 79 
 
 sorrow in her eyes, stirred Frankland to the very 
 springs of his manhood. With a quick, com 
 passionate, protecting gesture, he rose and took 
 the girl in his arms and raised her face to his. 
 
 " Agnes," he said, " look into my eyes. Tell me 
 that you know that however dark the rest of the 
 world may prove, the light you see there will 
 never fail. Tell me that you believe in the con 
 stancy of my love." 
 
 Agnes looked into the clear blue depths of her 
 lover s eyes, saw there truth and enduring love and 
 loyalty, and was comforted. With a swift, beauti 
 ful motion she put up her hand, drew down his 
 head, and pushing back his hair, kissed him once 
 upon the forehead. "Yes," she answered, "I 
 know, I believe." 
 
 Then she drew away, the suggestion of tears, 
 tears of mingled joy and sorrow in her manner, 
 and the tears sounded in her voice as she entreated, 
 " Go, now, dear sir. I want to be alone." 
 
 When Agnes stooped to receive the crown of 
 her guardian s love, she had not failed to count the 
 cost. And alas for her, poor maid of Marblehead, 
 the cost was all as great as she had counted ! In 
 Frankland s lordly home, descriptions of which 
 read like tales of some mythical mansion rather 
 than of what was once a part of our colonial 
 Boston, she lived a prisoner, until Frankland, 
 chafing at the slights and insults put upon her by
 
 80 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 
 
 the world, carried her off to an Arcadian paradise. 
 Yet even at Hopkinton, then a charming bit of 
 the primeval forest, in the shadow of Wachusett 
 and Monadnock, alone with nature and the man 
 she loved, there were occasional prickings and 
 stingings of the flesh ; conscience still whispered 
 accusingly and mutterings from the world pene 
 trated even through the giant box that hedged the 
 Arcadian paradise about. In England, whither 
 she went with Frankland, who was by that time 
 Sir Harry Frankland, baronet, it was no better. 
 At the ancestral home fresh ignominy awaited 
 her. 
 
 Indeed, it was not until Sir Harry, that nonpa 
 reil of eighteenth-century knighthood, who through 
 all the years of shame and suffering had remained 
 unreproachable in love and loyalty, not until he 
 lifted the crown that stung and in its place put 
 one thornless and nettleless that Agnes attained 
 the happiness which is innocence and lightness of 
 heart. 
 
 And the story of her recrowning does it not 
 read like an elaborately wrought romance ? the 
 earthquake at Lisbon; Frankland s tragic part 
 therein ; his rehearsal of his sins as he lay helpless 
 under the engulfing ruins, his judgment on him 
 self for the wrong he had done the woman he 
 loved, and his determination that, should he live, 
 he would right that wrong ; Agnes frantic search 
 through the surging, demolished city for her be-
 
 A CROWN THAT STUNG. 81 
 
 loved one, her finding and rescuing of him ; and as 
 the romantic climax to this most romantic of ro 
 mances, the marriage of Agnes Surriage to Sir Harry 
 Frankland, baronet? Could Shakespeare him 
 self have done better? Surely the fate that guides 
 our destinies is a mightier dramatist than the 
 mightiest poet, or novelist, or playwright among us. 
 Fate touched her with its magic wand, and she 
 who had once been the poor fisher-maid of Marble- 
 head underwent a miraculous change and became 
 Lady Frankland, one to wield the sceptre of social 
 dominion, and to make laws and maxims for the 
 fashionable world. In her new character she left 
 the realm of romance and entered the more prosaic, 
 and yet more happy region of every day life. But 
 as a last, significant reminder of that same realm 
 of romance from which she had gone forth, it should 
 be related that Lady Frankland wore her crown, 
 her thornless, nettleless one, with a proud humil 
 ity that did not forget past martyrdom, and could 
 be kind to all who, like herself, had lost their way 
 and wandered from the straight and narrow path.
 
 V. 
 
 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 
 
 A LIGHT breeze fluttered the white curtains at 
 the windows. With only the brass candlesticks 
 on the dressing-table giving light, it was comforta 
 bly cool in Hannah Waldo s pretty blue and white 
 boudoir. Nevertheless the young lady of the 
 boudoir plied her fan vigorously. There was anger 
 in its motion, anger too in the quick tapping of her 
 spangled slippers upon the floor, and anger in the 
 flashings of her dark eyes and in the spots of bright 
 color that glowed in her cheeks restrained, lady 
 like anger to be sure, but none the less anger. 
 
 In Hannah s lap lay a crumpled bit of paper. 
 She had read what was written thereon several 
 times already that day, but that evening she must 
 read again. As she smoothed the crumpled lines 
 and glanced over the now familiar words, a smile 
 that faintly yet unmistakably suggested scorn was 
 on her lips. 
 
 Noiselessly, save for the soft rustling of her lute 
 string gown, she went over to her dressing-table. 
 She held the crumpled bit of paper over the flarne 
 of one of her brass candlesticks and, as the paper 
 caught fire from the flame, she tossed it to the floor 
 
 82
 
 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 83 
 
 and stamped out the blaze with the heel of one of 
 her spangled slippers. 
 
 "He shall pay for this," she said under her 
 breath, with a determined tightening of her lips. 
 
 " Hannah ! " It was Hannah s married sister, 
 Mrs. Isaac Winslow, who spoke. She was standing 
 in the doorway behind Hannah. A light wrap 
 hung loosely on her shoulders. From her flushed, 
 flurried, excited appearance it was evident she had 
 just arrived and in a hurry. What is this I hear 
 about a postponement of your wedding ? " she in 
 quired, advancing into the boudoir. " Isaac came 
 home to dinner to-night with a report of it. T is 
 not true, I hope." 
 
 Without turning, Hannah busied herself indus 
 triously among the jewels on her dressing table in 
 search of a particular ring. 
 
 "Yes, tis true," she answered, with apparent 
 indifference, very much as though her wedding were 
 a matter of like importance with the weather. 
 
 " How calmly you take it ! " exclaimed her sister, 
 in amazement, seating herself upon the edge of one 
 of the dainty white chairs of the boudoir Mrs. 
 Winslow never seated herself comfortably when 
 she was excited. " Do you realize, child, that the 
 world will talk more than ever? " 
 
 By this time Hannah had found the ring. She 
 slipped it on her finger and, with a steadfast reserve 
 that gave the impression of indifference, she turned 
 and faced her sister.
 
 84 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 
 
 " I hardly see how that may be," she remarked 
 dryly. " The world has already attended to me 
 and my affairs with an excess of devotion." 
 
 Mrs. Winslow shook her head ominously. " My 
 dear, you don t know the world," she observed. 
 " The world never talks so much but that it may 
 talk more." 
 
 Hannah shrugged her pretty shoulders as much 
 as to say that the world and what the world said 
 were of small moment to her. " Shall we go 
 down ? " she queried, after a pause, putting the 
 snuffer over one of the candles as she spoke. 
 " Isaac came with you, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes," Mrs. Winslow answered, somewhat ab 
 stractedly. " I left him downstairs. I myself could 
 not wait. I felt that I must come directly to 
 you." 
 
 " T was kind of you." Hannah spoke in a formal 
 tone, and dropped the snuffer over the other candle. 
 
 On the stairway Mrs. Winslow, whose arm was 
 about Hannah s waist, ventured to ask, timorously, 
 for Hannah s reserve half frightened her, " Andrew, 
 of course, has some good cause for the postpone 
 ment?" 
 
 Hannah lifted her head slightly it may have 
 been in disdain and answered, " He wrote that 
 circumstances had occurred that made it necessary 
 for him to defer the wedding to a later day." As 
 she spoke it was with a sense of satisfaction that 
 those words had felt the flame of her brass candle-
 
 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 85 
 
 stick and lay, burnt to a cinder, upon the floor of 
 her boudoir. 
 
 The drawing-room toward which Hannah and 
 her sister made their way was brilliantly lighted. 
 All the candles in the sconces and the chandeliers 
 were burning, by their soft radiance touching into 
 lustre the prevailing tints of pink and green in 
 carpet, chairs, and darnask wall-hangings. 
 
 It looked its best by candle-light, this quietly 
 elegant drawing-room of the Waldo mansion. And 
 it always looked well. There were those who 
 thought it the finest drawing-room in all Boston, 
 not even excepting the drawing-room of His Ex 
 cellency Governor Shirley. It was so very aristo 
 cratic. Scarcely an evening went by that some 
 few of Boston s elect did not come thither to pass 
 a pleasant hour or two in its thoroughly refined, 
 thoroughly high-toned atmosphere. 
 
 On this particular evening, the elect few con 
 sisted almost exclusively of relatives and intimate 
 friends of the Waldos. In one corner of the room, 
 near the spinet, Isaac Winslow was speaking with 
 young Mrs. Sparhawk, she who had once been 
 Elizabeth Pepperell, the baronet s daughter, sister 
 to Andrew, very like her brother in feature, but 
 unlike him in her smiling, vivacious manner. Not 
 far from them, in the same corner by the spinet, 
 Madame Waldo was engaged in earnest conversa 
 tion with Stephen Minot, a wealthy merchant of 
 Boston, her husband s relative and close friend.
 
 86 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 
 
 And in the broad, front window by the card tables, 
 four gentlemen were seated talking. Of these 
 four one was Mr. Sparhawk, of Kittery, he who 
 had married the baronet s daughter. Two others 
 were Will Tyler and Joel Whittemore, nephews of 
 Sir William Pepperell and, consequently, cousins 
 to Andrew, both of them dashing young blades of 
 manhood. The fourth was a trim little gentleman 
 of alert glance and quick gesture, a somewhat re 
 markable personage, Thomas Flucker, secretary of 
 the province. 
 
 Of course every one in the drawing-room was 
 speaking of the same thing, the postponement of 
 Hannah s wedding. Hannah s wedding, sore trial 
 to Hannah s pride and patience, had long been a 
 much talked of matter. It was now nearly five 
 years since the publishment of her engagement to 
 Andrew Pepperell, the baronet s son, a young man 
 of rank and fortune, notably the best " catch " in 
 the province. The Pepperells were all very fond 
 of Hannah, were eager to have her one of their 
 family, and chafed at the length of the engage 
 ment. And the young man himself was fond of 
 Hannah. He, too, looked forward with pleasant 
 anticipation to having her enter the family as his 
 wife. But he was in no hurry, he was of the slow 
 sort. 
 
 After waiting awhile, the world, a world that 
 loved Hannah, grew angry with Andrew because 
 of his dilatoriness, called him a laggard lover,
 
 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 87 
 
 ridiculed the fact of his engagement, declared that 
 he would never marry Hannah Waldo. In the 
 face of such talk Hannah s position, needless to 
 say, was a trying one. However, her loyalty to 
 her lover did not once falter. No word of criticism 
 against him ever dared speak itself in her presence. 
 
 At length the lover grew more eager. A day 
 was named for the wedding; entertainment was 
 provided; elaborate preparation made. Then the 
 note from the bridegroom-elect to the bride-elect, 
 postponing the day of the wedding, arrived. That 
 note came like a thunderbolt. It shook the world, 
 the Waldo-Pepperell world, to its centre ; shook it 
 into a state of perplexed, of indignant amazement. 
 
 " This postponement of the wedding is certainly 
 very unfortunate," Mrs. Sparhawk was declaring to 
 Mr. Winslow. " People will talk more than ever 
 now. I cannot understand Andrew s conduct in 
 this. He has probably had another attack of the 
 vapors. You know he has not been well, and his 
 poor health, together with heavy losses of property 
 at sea, has produced a settled state of melancholy. 
 My father has done generously by him, has given 
 him a house and land enough to furnish a very 
 pretty income. Andrew ought to be satisfied. 
 But the poor boy is not himself. Of course not, 
 or he would never behave as he is doing. I cannot 
 understand his being such a laggard. I know that 
 he means only honor in the case, that he will never 
 be happy until he has married Hannah."
 
 88 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Minot was remarking to Madame 
 Waldo, " Hannah, I presume, is in this instance 
 the same heroine that she always is. All her friends 
 are talking of her dignified and proper behavior 
 throughout her long engagement to Andrew and 
 separation from him and amid the ill-natured com 
 ments that the world has passed upon him. If 
 only the young man himself could know fully how 
 gracefully she has conducted herself, I am sure he 
 would be fonder and prouder of her than ever." 
 
 And over in the window by the card tables Mr. 
 Sparhawk was observing, " The country, especially 
 the more worthy and better part of it, is quite ex 
 asperated at Andrew s conduct. We who are his 
 friends cannot but feel greatly concerned for him. 
 If the matter falls through and he never marries 
 the lady, I very much fear his character will be irre 
 trievably lost." 
 
 " And justly will his character be lost." It was 
 the trim little gentleman who spoke Thomas 
 Flucker, he who was secretary of the province. 
 To emphasize the word " justly " he brought down 
 his fist impetuously upon the table. He was a 
 vehement gentleman, and the table fairly quaked 
 beneath his blow. " In my opinion there is no one 
 so mean, so contemptible, as a laggard lover," he 
 asserted. 
 
 "But," interposed Mr. Sparhawk, his family 
 pride touched, "Andrew means honorably in the 
 case. He intends to marry Miss Hannah."
 
 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 89 
 
 " Then why does n t he come forward and claim 
 her?" demanded the vehement little secretary. 
 His round cheeks flushed with emotion, his small 
 black eyes sent forth angry lightnings. " Is he a 
 girl that he must be wooed to the altar ? There s 
 not another man in the province, I 11 wager, who 
 would have held off so long a while, when Miss 
 Hannah was the prize. Six years! I vow, six 
 weeks would have been too long a season of wait 
 ing, were I in Mr. Pepperell s shoes." 
 
 "If you feel that way, Flucker," suggested 
 young Tyler, slyly, " why not steal Andy s shoes 
 while he is sleeping ? They might fit you." 
 
 It was at this point in the conversation that 
 Hannah and her sister appeared in the door-way of 
 the drawing-room. Immediately the company 
 ceased talking of Hannah and the postponement of 
 Hannah s wedding. Mrs. Sparhawk seated herself 
 at the spinet and began playing softly, while those 
 about her sat silent, listening. The gentlemen at 
 the card tables rose and went forward to pay their 
 respects to the incoming ladies. 
 
 " What great matter were you gentlemen discuss 
 ing ? " Hannah inquired, when with Mr. Flucker 
 and Will Tyler she had drifted away from the rest 
 of the company over to the broad w r indow-seat, 
 near the card tables. " You seemed very much ex 
 cited about something when I entered." 
 
 " Flucker was criticising the way a certain gen 
 tleman wears his shoes," Will Tyler retorted gayly.
 
 90 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 
 
 " I advised him to take the shoes and wear them 
 himself, on the possibility that they might become 
 him better than the other man." 
 
 Hannah looked from Will to Mr. Flucker, smil 
 ing and apparently unconscious of any hidden 
 meaning in the words. " Why, Will," she ex 
 claimed, " would you make a robber of Mr. 
 Flucker?" 
 
 Will laughed. But Mr. Flucker did not laugh ; 
 instead, he regarded the girl gravely, more gravely 
 than the conversation appeared to warrant. 
 
 " Miss Hannah," he said, " I fear I am something 
 of a robber already. I steal by my thoughts if not 
 by my deeds." There was unmistakable meaning 
 in his words. An embarrassed silence followed 
 them. Then, glancing away from the girl, and 
 smiling to relieve the tension of the moment, he 
 continued, " I am inclined to think that I should 
 have lived in the time of Robin Hood and his rob 
 ber band. Their code of laws has always appealed 
 to me. To take from those who could spare, to 
 give to those who needed that was their way. 
 They robbed the undeserving and helped the de 
 serving. A certain rough sort of justice and honor 
 framed their code, a justice and honor with which 
 I sympathize. I, too, should like to rob the unde 
 serving, and take from those who, it seems to me, 
 have forfeited their claim." With sudden boldness 
 the secretary brought his small black eyes to bear 
 upon the girl s downcast face. " I think that a
 
 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 91 
 
 man may forfeit his claim, do not you, Miss Han 
 nah ? " 
 
 Hannah lifted her eyes to meet the secretary s 
 bold gaze. "Yes," she answered quickly, deter 
 minedly, with a flash of reminiscential anger. 
 
 Some moments later Will touched Joel Whit- 
 temore upon the shoulder and drew him aside. 
 " Joel," he whispered, " our cousin had best look 
 to his lady if ever he intends marrying her. She 
 and Flucker mean business." 
 
 He nodded in the direction of the two figures 
 in the recess of the window. The lattice was flung 
 wide open to the summer night, and Hannah and 
 the secretary were leaning out, gazing starward, 
 with an absorption in each other s presence that 
 seemed wholly oblivious of the rest of the world. 
 
 If Will Tyler was right in his surmise, and if 
 Hannah and Mr. Flucker really did mean " busi 
 ness," their business was apparently forgotten in 
 the days that followed. In those days Hannah s 
 approaching marriage to Andrew Pepperell was 
 the only business that manifested itself. Hannah, 
 it seemed, had agreed sweetly, heroically, to the 
 postponement of her wedding. A second day was 
 set, again invitations were sent out, entertainment 
 provided, elaborate preparation made. The world 
 elevated its brows and looked incredulous. " What 
 would be the excuse this time for postponing the 
 Walclo-Pepperell alliance ? " it wondered. 
 
 Hannah s wedding-day dawned with every prom-
 
 92 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 
 
 ise of happiness and success. The sky was clear, the 
 air balmy. Within and without the Waldo man 
 sion, things looked their best, with a profound re 
 spect for the solemnity of the occasion. 
 
 At the appointed hour the guests arrived. They 
 came, a goodly gathering of Boston s and Kittery s 
 finest and best, Waldos and Pepperells in large 
 numbers, and with them the Sewalls, the Chaun- 
 ceys, the Hirsts, the Sparhawks, the Langdons, the 
 Lears, and the Penhallows. 
 
 Most conspicuous among the guests was Hannah s 
 future father-in-law, the renowned baronet, Sir 
 William Pepperell. Very handsome and imposing 
 he was in his gold lace and purple satin, and his 
 new Ramillies wig bought especially for the occa 
 sion. He and his wife had driven all the way 
 from Kittery in their chariot to attend the wedding. 
 
 Courtly and serene, the baronet mingled among 
 the guests, and smiled his satisfaction in the busi 
 ness of the day. And to Madame Waldo he ex 
 pressed regret that his good friend General Waldo, 
 her husband, was absent in London at the time. 
 " I wish that he were here," he remarked, " to wit 
 ness this joyous consummation of our long-cherished 
 hopes." 
 
 At length came the moment that was to bring 
 the bride. The guests, assembled in the drawing- 
 room, looked toward the door, waiting and ex 
 pectant. The minister, immaculate in black coat 
 and white bands, standing in the deep recess of the
 
 SHE DID NOT ^AKE THE BRIDEGROOMS ARM
 
 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 93 
 
 window where the ceremony was to be performed, 
 looked toward the door, waiting and expectant. 
 And the bridegroom, a tall, slender gentleman very 
 fine in his suit of fawn-colored satin, his Mechlin 
 lace ruffles and his diamond buckles, with an antic 
 ipatory smile upon his pale, serious, Hamlet-like 
 face, from his station by the door looked toward 
 the stairs, waiting and expectant. 
 
 Down the stairs and along the hall, attended by 
 her bridesmaids, came Hannah and stood in the 
 door-way. She was all in white and beautiful 
 beneath her bridal veil, not pale like the bride 
 groom, but flushed and radiant, and her eyes were 
 dark, darker than usual it seemed, and very bright. 
 
 She did not take the bridegroom s arm, as by 
 rights she should have done. Instead she drew 
 away from him a step, and looked him up and 
 down, over all his magnificence of satin, lace, and 
 diamond buckles with a cool, distant stare. 
 
 Then she turned to the company, smiling ironi 
 cally, whimsically. "My friends," she said in a 
 clear voice, quiet and composed, "I fear I must 
 disappoint you. You have come expecting a 
 wedding, but there will be no wedding." Again 
 she regarded the bridegroom with that cool, 
 distant stare. "I have decided," she continued, 
 " that Mr. Pepperell has not that love and friend 
 ship for me which is necessary to make me 
 happy as his wife. Therefore I will not marry 
 him."
 
 94 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 
 
 Nothing could have been simpler, more free 
 from melodrama, yet more determined than the 
 way in which she spoke the ominous words. With 
 quickly brightening glance she turned again to 
 the company. " But this must not interfere with 
 your pleasure this afternoon, my friends," she de 
 clared. " There will be no wedding, but just as 
 though there were a wedding, there will be music 
 and dancing. Let the merry-making begin at once. 
 Pray choose your partners for the minuet." 
 
 One moment she dropped her eyes to the floor, 
 the next she had lifted them to look, not at the 
 tall, handsome bridegroom on her left, whose pale 
 ness had become a pallor, but instead at a trim 
 little gentleman on her right, whose small black 
 eyes were waiting for her look. 
 
 " Mr. Flucker," she said with dignity and with 
 great friendliness as well, "I believe I promised my 
 hand to you for the minuet, did I not ? It is ready 
 for you now" she extended her hand. "Will 
 you not lead me forth to the dance ? " 
 
 Sir William and his lady, it is said, returned 
 home from what was to have been their son s wed 
 ding, sadly disappointed. The other guests of that 
 wedding that was no wedding, went away, knowing 
 not whether to be sorry or pleased. From London 
 General Waldo wrote to his old friend Sir William 
 Pepperell, expressing his regret at his daughter s 
 change of mind. The bridegroom said nothing.
 
 THE SERVING OF A LAGGARD LOVER. 95 
 
 Like Hamlet, however, whom he resembled, he 
 probably thought and suffered a great deal. 
 
 The world elevated its brows and smiled. Miss 
 Hannah Waldo, it decided, was a very clever young 
 woman. 
 
 And the world was to elevate its brows still 
 higher and smile more broadly. Miss Hannah 
 Waldo had had her revenge. She was also to have 
 her consolation. Less than six weeks after that 
 dramatic severing of the Waldo-Pepperell alliance, 
 the rejected bridegroom, languishing in his Kittery 
 mansion, received a brief but pithy message from 
 his Boston cousin, Will Tyler. " I have to inform 
 you," wrote the waggish Will, " that last Monday 
 evening Miss Hannah Waldo, brought in her 
 chariot, appeared a bride at the West Church, New 
 Boston, and was married to Mr. Flucker."
 
 VI. 
 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 
 
 GOVERNOR BENNING WENTWORTH was alone in 
 his Council Chamber. The members of his Council, 
 after a long and tedious meeting, had withdrawn. 
 Business was done for the day. In the quiet of 
 the twilight hour, the Governor sat in his easy- 
 chair by the window, the broad eastern window 
 that looked out upon Little Harbor, and smoked 
 his long pipe, and tried to fancy that he was happy. 
 
 He had much to make him happy, he reminded 
 himself. He was the greatest man in New Hamp 
 shire, governor of the province. Things went very 
 much as he directed laws were made and un 
 made, lands granted, offenders punished, according 
 to his decree. People smirked and salaamed before 
 him. He rode in a chariot and was served by 
 slaves. And his house, that stood a short distance 
 out of the town of Portsmouth, a sequestered, 
 stately, noble sort of pile, was a palace in the 
 primitive fashion of the day and land. 
 
 Recounting to himself his benefits, and puffing 
 at his pipe with an assumption of content, the 
 Governor looked about him. His glance travelled 
 round his Council Chamber from carved mantel to 
 
 96
 
 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 97 
 
 oaken floor, from painted panel and rich tapestry- 
 to the broad fireplace where stout logs blazed and 
 roared ; and having left the Council Chamber his 
 glance went further, through doors that opened 
 upon the billiard room, where were visible the 
 table and, to one side, a buffet on which punch 
 bowl, tankards, and glass goblets were set forth; 
 and going yet further, his glance reached through 
 other doors showing vistas of other rooms where, 
 on festive occasions, cards and games of many sorts 
 were played. 
 
 His glance having noted all these things, symbols 
 of magnificence and pleasure, came back to his fire 
 place and the empty chairs about him, came back 
 drearily, missing something. This place was his 
 house, his palace, he remarked to himself. But 
 was it home ? he queried. Could any place be home 
 to a man who was a widower and childless ? Nay, 
 he reflected, wanting wife and children his house 
 in spite of its magnificence was cheerless, and 
 wanting wife and children his life in spite of its 
 elevation and its honors was cheerless too, as cheer 
 less, he told himself, as the scene without his win 
 dow a scene of bare trees and frosted lawns 
 reaching down to a gray sea. 
 
 The Governor s mood as he arrived at this con 
 clusion was not one of sentiment. The Governor 
 was not a sentimental man. His face, florid and 
 genial, his portly person, and his general air of easy 
 dignity and graciousness showed him to be, what
 
 98 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 
 
 in truth he was, a man completely given to the 
 material things of life. He governed practically, 
 shrewdly, with an eye to the province s purse and 
 his own as well. He lived high, sleeping, eating, 
 drinking, smoking to his fill. He loved his snuff 
 boxes and his bowls, his cards, his hunting, and his 
 racing. And he had loved his wife and his chil 
 dren, not merely as he loved these other things of 
 course, yet with a difference of degree rather than 
 of kind. His wife had been much dearer to him 
 than his cards, but he had expended no more senti 
 ment upon her than he expended upon them. And 
 he missed her, according to his nature, with no 
 great constancy of affection or sorrow in his loss of 
 her, but with the wish that she might have con 
 tinued with him to give the needed touch of 
 cheeriness, of comfort, of home to his surroundings. 
 It was with this wish at his heart, and with the 
 added wish that his sons too might have been 
 spared to him to make enjoyable the last years of 
 his life, that the Governor gazed sadly out of his 
 Council Chamber window. The winter scene with 
 out reminded him of his own winter, of the frosty 
 locks that a wig could hide but not rejuvenate, and 
 of those sixty years or more, the weight of which 
 was heavy upon him. The Governor drew a sigh, 
 meditating that he was indeed getting to be an old 
 man, that he had been a widower for a long while, 
 and that if he wished to derive any further pleasure 
 from life before he died, such pleasure as love and
 
 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 99 
 
 matrimony might confer, t was time he went about 
 it. 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, because the 
 Governor was a widower of many years standing, 
 that he was such without ever having made an at 
 tempt to change his condition. Rumor told an 
 amusing but not wholly creditable tale about a 
 matrimonial endeavor of his. When his widower s 
 weeds had not long been withered, it was whispered, 
 the Governor s fancy had been captured by a certain 
 Mistress Molly Pitman, and to the maiden he had 
 offered himself, his riches, and his honors. But 
 Molly, who was a maiden with more of sentiment 
 than of worldliness about her, had preferred one 
 Master Shortridge, a mechanic. Thereupon the 
 Governor, with a stroke of playful humor and of 
 deviltry as well, had kidnapped the mechanic, and 
 sent him off to serve in foreign ports. But fate, 
 with a playfulness and deviltry to outrival the 
 Governor s, restored the lovers to each other. 
 And the Governor was left a widower to await 
 the pleasure of some less romantic maiden than 
 Mistress Molly Pitman. 
 
 It was with the remembrance of Molly Pitman, 
 rankling like a thorn in his flesh no doubt, that the 
 Governor started suddenly, somewhat indignantly 
 from his chair, and going over to a tall pier-glass 
 that was in a further corner of the room, stood 
 before it, surveying himself critically. The sight 
 of his imposing figure, resplendent in purple and
 
 100 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 
 
 gold, and radiant with the glory of diamond clasps 
 and silver buckles, impressed him favorably and he 
 was satisfied. 
 
 " Surely I may find favor in a woman s eyes," 
 he told himself; and unconsciously, so absorbed 
 was he, so very much in earnest, he spoke aloud. 
 
 " Your Excellency hath spoken truly," said a 
 voice behind him, a voice in which reverence and 
 impudence most charmingly united. 
 
 The Governor turned in the direction of the 
 voice. " Martha," he said, surprised, abashed, re 
 proving, and yet pleased. 
 
 Martha was standing in the doorway that led 
 into the hall. The portraits of the ancestral Went- 
 worths were above her, and about her was the 
 oaken, carved, conventional magnificence of the 
 colonial palace. But Martha stood unawed, un 
 afraid, a wayward sunbeam that had dared to 
 penetrate through the gloom into the innermost 
 sanctum of the palace. A branch of candles was 
 in her hand, bringing brightness into the room, 
 and lighting into radiance her own fair, gypsy-like 
 face. 
 
 "I thought perchance your Excellency might 
 wish for lights," she observed, coming forward and 
 setting down the branch of candles on a table near 
 to where the Governor was standing. " It grows 
 dark early these winter afternoons." She turned 
 upon the Governor a glance demure, yet smiling, 
 that seemed to say that she would keep her place
 
 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 101 
 
 and at the same time would enjoy a joke even at 
 his Excellency s expense. 
 
 " You are a thoughtful girl, Martha," remarked 
 the Governor, approvingly. " But for you, in spite 
 of slaves and servants, I should fare poorly in my 
 own house." 
 
 " I but do my duty, sir," she answered, lowering 
 her eyes and moving toward the door. For ill her 
 sweet humility there was an air of cunning and 
 audacity about her. She was certainly a most 
 contradictory, inconsistent, wondrous bit of femin 
 inity, and would have interested a more fastidious 
 man than Governor Benning Wentworth. 
 
 " Martha," called the Governor, when she had 
 reached the threshold. He had drawn his chair to 
 the table where she had placed the branch of 
 candles and sat there, his hands folded upon the 
 table, regarding her with the pleased expression 
 that she so often woke in his face. " How long 
 have you been in my service, Martha?" he in 
 quired. 
 
 " Seven years," she answered. 
 
 " Seven years," he repeated after her. " That is 
 a long time, Martha, for one who is young like 
 you." He spoke meditatively, and continued to 
 regard her with the pleased expression. " And all 
 that while you have served me well," he continued. 
 " You have been careful of my comforts, quick to 
 do my bidding, and slow to ask favors of me. You 
 have been a good girl, Martha, and now what
 
 102 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 
 
 reward do you ask for your seven years of service ? " 
 he inquired. " You yourself shall name the reward, 
 and with pleasure I will grant it." 
 
 A light flashed in the girl s face. She advanced 
 toward the Governor several steps. " I am to 
 name the reward and your Excellency will grant 
 whatever I ask ? " she questioned quickly, eagerly. 
 
 The Governor nodded, smiling at her impetu 
 osity. He guessed that she would ask of him some 
 girlish trifle a ribbon, a trinket, or perchance a 
 gown. 
 
 But here he misjudged the daring maiden before 
 him. Martha Hilton was not one to stop at a 
 ribbon, a trinket, or a gown. Her ambitions 
 reached higher than trifles. Her ambitions would 
 make of her a lady, would have her ride in a 
 chariot, would put a title before her name, would 
 have her go gowned in brocaded satin, her hair 
 dressed over a towering cushion, red heels upon her 
 slippers. 
 
 Martha s ambitions were with her always. They 
 rose with her in the morning, ate with her, worked 
 with her through the day, found their way into her 
 prayers and lay down with her at night. Indeed, 
 they must have been born with her. Seven years 
 before the time of this scene in the Governor s 
 Council Chamber, when Martha was just a more 
 slip of a girl, they were as omnipresent as at this 
 later date when the bloom of her twentieth summer 
 was upon her. When naught but a scrub girl, bare-
 
 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 103 
 
 footed, bare-shouldered, and with dishevelled h?ar, 
 fetching water from the town pump and splashing 
 her bare feet with the drops that fell from her pail, 
 the light of reckless, impudent, merry childhood 
 dancing in her eyes, her shoeless, decollete* condi 
 tion had scandalized a proper dame, Mistress Stavers, 
 hostess of the Earl of Halifax Inn. Dame Stavers 
 standing in the doorway, of her tavern, beholding 
 Martha as she passed, had remonstrated, exclaim 
 ing, k You Pat, you Pat, how dare you go looking 
 so ? " But Martha, who, in spite of bare feet and 
 shoulderless gown, already dreamed of future 
 glory had tossed her head pertly and proudly, 
 retorting, " No matter how I look now, madam, I 
 shall yet ride in my chariot." Martha a child, it 
 may be seen, was ambitious as well as Martha a 
 woman. 
 
 Martha s ambitions, together with a tact, a clever 
 ness, a daring all as inborn as her ambitions, had 
 already lifted her several rounds up the ladder of 
 success. For seven years she had served the Gov 
 ernor and in that time had not failed in her duty to 
 him, had grown practised, skilled in household arts, 
 and wise in the knowledge of her master s likes and 
 dislikes. She had won her master s approval and 
 his praises. She was first among his servants, next 
 himself in importance in his household. Was it 
 surprising, considering how she had progressed, that 
 she should be daring to raise her eyes still higher, 
 even to the eminence of the Governor himself?
 
 104 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 
 
 To Martha herself it was not at all surprising 
 that she should so dare. She knew that a marriage 
 betweeA the Governor and herself would not be the 
 first marriage between high and low. She may not 
 have been familiar with the story of King Cophetua 
 and the beggar maid, but other stories, similar to 
 that classic one, were happening all about her. 
 The shifting society of the colonial day, its roman 
 tic, adventurous character, made marriages between 
 high and low a not unusual occurrence, and in dar 
 ing to lift her eyes to the Governor, Martha was 
 not without precedent. 
 
 * Your Excellency will grant whatever I ask ? " 
 again she queried. Her eyes were very bright and 
 the color came and went in her cheeks ; but she was 
 self-possessed with the self-possession that comes 
 always to brave spirits in moments of great crisis. 
 
 Again the Governor nodded, smiling. He noted 
 the girl s bright eyes and changing color, but only 
 to reflect that this maid-servant of his was fair, 
 fairer indeed, he thought, than those high-stepping, 
 aristocratic dames who thronged his card rooms, 
 reception rooms, and ball rooms on occasions of 
 festivity. 
 
 Martha courtesied low before the Governor. Then 
 she rose slowly and stood erect before him, turning 
 upon him a glance quick, determined, and intrepid, 
 yet shy withal and coquettishly appealing. 
 
 "I ask no less a boon than your Excellency s 
 self," she said.
 
 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 105 
 
 Her words brought the Governor to his feet. 
 " Hoity, toity ! " he exclaimed, but his tone was 
 one of surprise rather than of displeasure. It might 
 be that his maid-servant was presumptuous, yet 
 truly she was presumptuous in a very agreeable, 
 charming sort of way. She flattered his vanity, 
 she tickled his sense of humor. 
 
 The Governor played first with his ruffles and 
 then with his watch-chain, surveying Martha all 
 the while with an amused smile. 
 
 "So you would be Governor s Lady?" he in 
 quired. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, her eyes smiling with his 
 eyes, her head held very high and proud. 
 
 " Gad ! " exclaimed the Governor, admiration in 
 his glance; "I don t doubt but that you would 
 make a good one." 
 
 " Would I not, though ! " exclaimed Martha, her 
 voice rippling with laughter, her eyes dancing 
 enthusiastically at the prospect. "Do you not 
 think a train gown and rings upon my fingers 
 would become me?" She swished an imaginary 
 train, as she spoke, and held out her fingers to 
 show imaginary rings. " Who knows your house 
 so well as I ? " she demanded with pretty sauciness ; 
 "and who knows you so well? And could I not 
 order the servants about royally?" Her eyes 
 flashed with promises of despotism. " And could 
 I not act the grand lady to perfection? She 
 smiled and folded her hands and elevated her chin
 
 106 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 
 
 after the manner of grand ladies. The dramatic 
 artist, that was a large part of Martha, rose nobly 
 to the occasion. Martha played to the Governor 
 as she had never played to any one before. There 
 was genius in her every motion. 
 
 The Governor proved a most appreciative audi 
 ence. He laughed and applauded, and at the end 
 pronounced the verdict, " Martha, you have not 
 your match in the province." 
 
 Again Martha courtesied. "Saving only your 
 Excellency," she said, and her manner was that 
 mingling of reverence and impudence characteristic 
 of her and very pleasing to the Governor. 
 
 " And is my boon to be granted ? " she demanded. 
 
 "If thou wilt woo me with a kiss, thou shalt 
 have me Lady Wentworth," he answered. 
 
 Had the little god with the quiver and the 
 arrows tried to make a third with Martha and the 
 Governor, he must have withdrawn from their 
 company abashed. Such boldness on her part, 
 such levity on his, was not at all according to the 
 code of the little god. 
 
 But if love was missing from the union, at least 
 each got what he and she desired the Governor 
 his domestic comfort, and Martha her coach and 
 brocaded gown, her red-heeled slippers, and servants 
 to obey her beck and call, all that magnificence 
 and power, indeed, of which she had dreamed. 
 
 Martha and the Governor lived their lives
 
 GOVERNOR PROVED A MOST APPRECIATIVE AUDIENCE.
 
 THE WOOING OF A GOVERNOR. 107 
 
 according to their lights, somewhat glaring, and 
 after a fashion of their own, somewhat worldly. 
 Whatever their faults, however, they certainly were 
 not prosaic. And so, Romance found them and, 
 Avith an indulgent smile, enrolled them in the list 
 of her immortals.
 
 VII. 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 "I BELIEVE that is all, gentlemen." As he 
 spoke, Dr. Benjamin Rush rose and pushed back 
 his chair. Save for an expression of weariness 
 about the eyes, he was his usual cheerful, urbane 
 self. " The case in question was a very particular 
 case," he said. " I felt the need of other opinion 
 than my own. I thank you for the interest you 
 have taken. What you say only confirms what I 
 myself had feared. The case is hopeless." 
 
 He went over to the window of his lodgings and 
 looked out across a vista of brick walls, roofs, and 
 city gardens to a glimpse of green country land 
 indistinct in the distance. His eyes could not see 
 the vine-clad farmhouse that was somewhere there, 
 but his imagination gave it form with all the clear 
 ness of reality. 
 
 The other gentlemen, all friends of his as well 
 as fellow-workers, thought that they read in his 
 expression, one of abstraction and remoteness, a 
 wish to be alone. They did not stop to discuss 
 with him Dr. Redman s lecture at the Medical 
 College of the night before, nor to retail any pro 
 fessional gossip as, under ordinary circumstances, 
 
 108
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 109 
 
 they might have done. They moved towards the 
 door, their three-cornered hats beneath their arms. 
 
 Dr. Rush bowed them out with his usual cour 
 tesy ; but when Dr. James, his old-time chum and 
 classmate, would have made his departure with the 
 rest, he called him back. 
 
 " James," he remarked to the young man who 
 stood before him, looking a sympathy he could not 
 express, " to what good were we created, we doc 
 tors ? My wise-looking medical volumes, my black 
 bottles arrayed in deadly ranks upon the shelves, 
 my diploma from the College of Edinburgh, with 
 its bold flourishes and dazzling seal, hung in such 
 prominence upon the wall, they all mock me." 
 He spoke in a tone of light irony, pointing to the 
 objects as he named them. A smile brightened his 
 serious face, but quickly vanished and was suc 
 ceeded by an expression of more intense serious 
 ness than before. 
 
 James went up to him and grasped his hand. 
 "You should not speak so, Rush," he protested. 
 " You have done great good in the world already, 
 and you will do even greater." 
 
 The doctor shook his head. " Our power fails 
 us when we most need it," he declared. And then, 
 in a tone of deep earnestness and feeling, from 
 which all lightness had passed, " We have just now 
 condemned to death the purest of souls and the 
 sweetest of women," he said. 
 
 James met the doctor s sorrowing eyes with a
 
 110 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 look of understanding and compassion. " I feared 
 that t was Mistress Eve," he said. 
 
 " Yes," answered the doctor, simply, and returned 
 gratefully his old chum s eloquent pressure of the 
 hand. 
 
 The doctor s servant, coming into the room a few 
 moments later, found him alone, seated at his desk, 
 his head resting in his hands. As the man entered, 
 the doctor roused himself with a half start. " My 
 hat and cane, if you please," he ordered shortly, 
 " and if any one should call, I will not be back till 
 evening." 
 
 Leaving his lodgings, Dr. Rush passed out into 
 a world of warm summer sunshine, of talkativeness 
 and fashion. It was that hour of the afternoon 
 when the belles and beaux of Philadelphia turned 
 out to promenade along High street, what is now 
 Market street, the old-time mall of the Quaker 
 city, there to observe the latest styles, to display 
 to best advantage their own dazzling costumes, and 
 to exchange salutations, greetings, and bits of news 
 and gossip, with the rest of the social world. 
 
 Dr. Rush was not in the mood to enjoy the 
 brightness and the merry-making. The sunshine 
 blinded him, and the talk and laughter jarred upon 
 his ear. Nevertheless, he must play his part in the 
 brilliant panorama. His position in the world of 
 fashion demanded that he should. 
 
 Already, on that summer afternoon of the year 
 1773, Dr. Benjamin Rush was something of a social
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. Ill 
 
 star. Not that he was a macaroni. Indeed, his 
 dress was of the simplest. But he was a man of 
 education, culture, and refinement ; of a ready wit 
 and considerable charm of manner. Though not 
 yet thirty, he had established a reputation for him 
 self as a man of letters and a physician of distin 
 guished ability. Moreover, he had travelled and 
 studied in foreign lands. The aroma of the Old 
 World was about him. And altogether he was a 
 most desirable sort of person, a young man deemed 
 worthy of the patronage of Philadelphia s elite. 
 
 Therefore, as he took his way along High street, 
 he must stop to bow profoundly before numerous 
 smiling, courtesying dames, and to shake hands and 
 take snuff with this and that gentleman of his ac 
 quaintance. Now and then a very fine painted 
 chair or coach came to a halt at sight of him and 
 he was summoned by a gracious wave of glittering 
 fan or flutter of lace handkerchief to pay his re 
 spects at my lady s chariot window. With a gently 
 drawn sigh and a languid glance from under long 
 lashes, he was assured that my lady was well, quite 
 well. There was of course the inevitable migraine, 
 but that was only to be expected when the weather 
 continued so warm and sultry. Surely there must 
 be magic in the doctor s powders. They had re 
 stored her mamma and herself to health and happi 
 ness. And how was Dr. Rush ? She did not find 
 him in his usual looks. Had he been ill that his 
 friends had seen him so seldom of late ? or was this
 
 112 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 sudden withdrawal of his from the world all be 
 cause of a certain fair Eve of his acquaintance ? 
 She would not deny she had heard rumors. Ah, it 
 was true, then ! Another man subjected to the 
 despotism of the petticoat ! Well, she congratu 
 lated him upon his subjugation and was glad to 
 hear he had so sweet a mistress. 
 
 Dr. Rush watched the departing chariot with a 
 whimsical sort of smile. There had been a time 
 when such condescension from the quality had 
 gratified him mightily. But now now he had 
 discovered pleasure of a better sort. 
 
 He left the mall and its gay, glittering throng 
 behind him and sought the quiet, shadowy streets 
 of the city. For a while his way led him beneath 
 rows of oaks and chestnuts, great towering trees 
 that might have been remnants of the primeval 
 forest, past modest dwellings of red brick and 
 white wood with trim little gardens attached. Here 
 a comfortable cool prevailed and the air wafted 
 over the garden walls was sweet with the scent of 
 roses and honeysuckle. The brightness and merry 
 making of High street had wearied him, and here, 
 in this atmosphere of calm retirement, a restless 
 ness possessed him. The primeval trees, the 
 modest dwellings, the trim gardens with their 
 sweet scents all seemed to be breathing a spirit of 
 patience and content with which he could not feel 
 in harmony. 
 
 After a time, however, the quiet, shadowy
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 113 
 
 streets came to an end. He was getting beyond 
 the city limits into the fields and marshes of the 
 Northern Liberties. Before him, in the midst of 
 open, uncleared spaces, rose a long range of brick 
 buildings which he recognized as the British bar 
 racks. Here the doctor found himself in a scene 
 of noisy confusion. At first he was perplexed to 
 know the cause of the excitement, but presently he 
 remembered that there was to be a review of the 
 troops on the parade ground that afternoon which 
 the populace was invited to attend. 
 
 The review was evidently at an end, and the 
 region about the barracks was overrun with a jost 
 ling, elbowing, homeward-bound crowd. In such a 
 company, courtesy was pushed to the wall. The 
 doctor took refuge in a doorway and waited. 
 
 As he stood there surveying the hurly-burly scene 
 with an amused sort of indulgence, he noted in the 
 crowd a young girl who seemed to be getting more 
 than her share of the jostling and elbowing. She 
 was of slender, delicate physique, but the excite 
 ment of the moment, or indignation at the rude 
 ness of her neighbors, had brought a bright color to 
 her cheeks, and her red hair beneath her trig little 
 bonnet flashed in the sunlight like a crown of bur 
 nished gold. " How well she looks ! " thought the 
 doctor, and for the moment he experienced an 
 awakening of hope. The physician was lost in the 
 lover. 
 
 The girl was unconscious of the doctor s fixed
 
 114 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 gaze. She was looking straight before her with an 
 air of studied dignity and self-poise that assumed a 
 complete indifference to the company about her. 
 To one who knew her, however, discomfiture was 
 manifest in the downward droop of her mouth and 
 the wide, troubled expression of her eyes. And 
 when, at length, a great hulking fellow in military 
 costume brushed against her and addressed her in 
 terms of half-tipsy gallantry, her courage wavered. 
 Her lip quivered just the slightest, and she looked 
 about her with a childlike piteousness of appeal. 
 
 A firm, steadying hand was placed beneath her 
 arm and a strong voice spoke in her ear, " Well, 
 Sally, is it not time you put yourself under some 
 body s protection ? " 
 
 The girl turned quickly in the direction of the 
 voice, her whole face lighting with a surprised and 
 pleased relief. " Oh, Dr. Rush," she exclaimed, 
 " I am very glad to see you. T was exceedingly 
 mortifying to find myself all alone in this tumult." 
 
 " And how, may I ask, came you to venture out 
 all alone in this tumult ? " inquired the doctor, with 
 an attempt at sternness, arfd then, with a softening 
 of tone, " Is it kind to me, Sally, not to take better 
 care of yourself ? " 
 
 " Pray do not scold," entreated Sally, gently, 
 " twas not my fault. Remember the old copy in 
 the copy books and be not overhasty to judge. 
 
 The happy laughing light in her eyes would have 
 routed a more serious reproof than the doctor s.
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 115 
 
 He smiled, trying to catch a little of her quiet 
 gayety, yet feeling every moment more keenly the 
 pain of the knowledge that he bore. " T was the 
 haste of love that prompted me," he said. 
 
 " Yes, I know," interposed Sally, quickly, and a 
 joyous ring in her voice answered the ardor of his 
 tone. " But let me explain. In the first place I 
 did not venture out alone, but with a company 
 of friends. We came to see the general review ; " 
 and then with an inquiring look, " I suppose you 
 did too." 
 
 The doctor ruminated. " I did not know just 
 why I came ; but now I know t was to see you," 
 he concluded, with an air of proud triumph. 
 
 Sally laughed happily. " And to save my re 
 spect," she added ; " I am very grateful. Really 
 twas most humiliating to discover that I had lost 
 my friends in some way, and that I was alone on 
 the Common surrounded by people of all ranks and 
 denominations, and without a gentleman to protect 
 me," and she shook her head slowly and sadly over 
 the seriousness of her recent dilemma. 
 
 " You admit, then, a gentleman is somewhat neces 
 sary to a lady s happiness? " The doctor spoke in a 
 tone of light raillery. He was doing very well, he 
 told himself ; but all the while he felt like a man 
 in a play acting a part with which he was not 
 quite familiar. 
 
 Sally surveyed him with a look that might have 
 been saucy had it not been for the unfailing sweet-
 
 116 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 ness of her countenance. " Only because of custom," 
 she retorted, " not for any real service that he does 
 her. T was pride, not fear, that discomposed me a 
 few moments ago. I was ashamed to think that 
 some one I knew might see me and recognize me 
 all alone in this tumult. Now, when I am with 
 you, I hold up my head and do not care whom I 
 meet. And all because of custom ! " She spoke 
 with playful irony as one who saw the foolishness 
 of such a custom, but must of necessity conform to 
 it. Then, with an upward glance at the doctor 
 and a smile that contradicted her words, " If t were 
 not for custom," she added, " and if t were deemed 
 proper for a maid to walk alone upon the crowded 
 streets, I might not be leaning so docilely upon 
 your arm." 
 
 The doctor drew a long sigh. " Then thank 
 God for custom ! " he ejaculated emphatically. 
 
 He looked with lingering tenderness into the 
 face upturned to his. It was a face of rare beauty, 
 a beauty of expression rather than of physical per 
 fection, a changeful face, the color coming and 
 going, the e} -es darkening and lighting with each 
 fresh-coming thought and fancy. There was about 
 it, as about Sally herself, an individual sweetness 
 and winsomeness. Sally was different from those 
 grand dames who had smiled upon him from char 
 iot windows, as the meadow-blown rose was dif 
 ferent from its carefully nurtured sisters of the hot 
 house, so the doctor determined. Hers was the
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. Ill 
 
 freshness, the originality, the purity like that which 
 comes with the dew of the morning and the breath 
 of the open country. 
 
 Just now the face she raised to his was eloquent 
 with the gladness of loving and being loved. 
 There was something infectious about such glad 
 ness. A glimmer of its spirit fell upon the doctor. 
 "She is happy," he thought. "May not I forget 
 for the moment and be happy with her ? The pres 
 ent is ours to live and enjoy." And with the re 
 flection, there came comfort and a certain shadowy 
 sort of happiness. 
 
 They had passed through the crowd almost with 
 out realizing it. A country road stretched before 
 them, a country road that has since changed its as 
 pect and become the scene of city sights and city 
 noises. Then, when Sally and the doctor knew it, 
 wild flowers grew along its edge and its circuitous 
 course led past duck pond, whortleberry marsh, 
 and hay-field. 
 
 The sun was near to setting when Sally and the 
 doctor turned into the road. A ruddy splendor 
 glowed on the western moorland and lingered about 
 the hay-stacks and in the quiet pools where yellow 
 water-lilies bloomed. The lowing of the cattle and 
 the good-night twitter of the birds announced the 
 close of day. 
 
 A ploughman in field regimentals returning from 
 his day s work, his dog following at his heels, came 
 toward them down the long, shaded vista of the
 
 118 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 road. As he passed, the doctor raised his hat and 
 nodded. " I hope I see you well, sir," he said 
 courteously. The man was one of his unpaying 
 patients. 
 
 Sally looked up into the doctor s face and smiled. 
 " Do you know why I love you one reason ? " 
 she inquired. 
 
 " I have often wondered," mused the doctor, half 
 jestingly, half seriously. 
 
 " T is because of your big soul," she declared. 
 " Your cordial greeting knows no distinction be 
 tween your wealthiest patron and your poorest 
 charity patient." 
 
 " The poor are my best patients," he rejoined ; 
 " God is their paymaster." 
 
 Sally s praise was sweet to the doctor, and yet it 
 brought with it a sense of future loss that changed 
 this sweet to bitter. For the moment he could not 
 see her because of the sudden dimness in his eyes. 
 
 He looked away to the western horizon. The 
 sun had set, but an afterglow still lingered in the 
 sky. He read a sadness in the dying colors. They 
 told of change, of perishableness, of death. 
 
 " It has been a fine day," he said. To himself it 
 seemed as though he spoke of a lost friend. 
 
 " A fine day," Sally responded, and the careless 
 ness of her tone contrasted strangely with the 
 doctor s sorrowing mood, " but not an uncommon 
 day. Therefore in a week or so I dare say t will be 
 entirely forgotten."
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 119 
 
 The doctor smiled faintly. There was often in 
 Sally s conversation, as now, a light cynicism of a 
 very girlish sort, more feigned than real. It added 
 to her originality and piquancy and it amused the 
 doctor. Just now, however, it jarred a little. It 
 was not in sympathy with his thoughts. 
 
 " T is the same with the w r eather and mankind," 
 continued Sally, unconscious of the irony of her 
 words and of their effect upon the doctor. " Only 
 the extreme in both is remembered. I often think 
 it a great ingratitude that the commonplace good 
 and wise folks are forgotten, while others not so 
 good and wise have their names handed down to 
 posterity because this one or that one has been 
 accounted the best hairdresser or the best fiddle- 
 maker of his time." 
 
 The doctor laughed in spite of himself. " Curi 
 osity s another name for man," he rejoined, quoting 
 from Thomas Godfrey, a popular young poet of 
 the day : 
 
 " The blazing meteor streaming thro the air 
 Commands our wonder and admiring eyes. 
 With eager gaze we trace the lucent paths, 
 Till, spent at last, it strikes to native nothing; 
 While the bright stars which ever steady glow, 
 Unheeded shine and bless the world below. 
 
 " Which would you rather be, Sally, the blazing 
 meteor or the bright unheeded star ? " 
 
 Sally smiled, a quiet contented sort of smile. 
 " There is little of the meteor character in my
 
 120 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 composition," she said. " You will have to do the 
 blazing for both of us, I fear." 
 
 Her eyes sought the western horizon. There, 
 above the last rose flush, a star shone pale and 
 solitary, and with a beckoning light. " Look ! " 
 she said, directing the doctor s gaze to it. " There 
 I am or there I will be for when I die my soul 
 shall find some little star like that, and there watch 
 over the world and you." 
 
 The little star blurred before the doctor s eyes, 
 and his heart throbbed with the pain that Sally s 
 words conveyed. But Sally was unconscious of 
 his suffering. She spoke as one to whom death 
 was as yet a far-off thing, vague and untangible. 
 
 Realizing this, and wishing to keep the knowl 
 edge of her fate from her as long as possible, the 
 doctor made a supreme effort for self-control, and 
 then remarked with careful carelessness, " You 
 forget, Sally, long before your advent as a star, in 
 my character of blazing meteor I shall probably 
 have struck to native nothing. 
 
 Sally s brow clouded, but cleared almost instantly 
 in a bright smile. " You shall not be a blazing 
 meteor," she said. "We will find something 
 better," and she studiously searched the great 
 glimmer of the sky for a heavenly body worthy of 
 her lover. True love knows no proportions. 
 
 Sally s contemplation of heavenly bodies, how 
 ever, was very soon interrupted by things more 
 close at hand. They had come to the dark, flow-
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 121 
 
 ing waters of " Coxon s Creek," and as they crossed 
 the rude wooden bridge that arched it, there before 
 them stood the little vineclad farmhouse that was 
 Sally s home. Lights were shining in the windows, 
 the scent of clover and of new-mown hay was in 
 the air, and from the orchard near by a song spar 
 row, sweetest of summer warblers, was pouring 
 forth his evening voluntary. The spirit of a cheery 
 and domestic calm breathed about the place. 
 
 Sally turned at the gate, as though to say good 
 night. But the doctor would not let her go from 
 his sight. "I may come in and drink tea with 
 you?" he pleaded. 
 
 Sally regarded him in pleased surprise. " I had 
 thought you were too busy," she explained. 
 
 " And may not a doctor have a holiday now and 
 then as well as other men?" he protested, as they 
 walked up the path together, hand in hand. 
 
 Sally s home was a simple, unpretentious little 
 farmhouse, but none the less there was an air of 
 quiet elegance about it. At one time Sally s 
 father, who was a sea-captain, had been a prosper 
 ous gentleman. He and his family had lived " in 
 very comfortable circumstances," so it is reported, 
 " in a large stone house," in the most aristocratic 
 quarter of the Quaker capital. His children had 
 received a fine education and had " moved in Phil- 
 delphia best society." It was only recently that 
 the Captain had met with reverses and withdrawn 
 to the farm. The farm was being run by Mrs. Eve,
 
 122 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 Sally, and the younger boys. Captain Eve and 
 his two elder sons were away on a long cruise to 
 the West Indies. But, though the Eves had lost 
 their fortune, they had not lost their culture and 
 refinement and the good taste that can transform 
 even a simple and unpretentious little farmhouse 
 into a pleasant, attractive home. 
 
 Mrs. Eve and the boys Sally s brothers were 
 already at their tea-drinking, when Sally and the 
 doctor entered. The room was bright with a soft 
 candle-light. Steam issued from the generous 
 china tea-pot over which Mrs. Eve presided, and 
 the aroma of the favorite colonial beverage filled 
 the air. 
 
 . Sally would have played hostess and waited on 
 the doctor, but he insisted that she sit down and 
 passed her tea to her and saw that she was served 
 before he himself would touch a mouthful. " She 
 is tired," he explained to her mother. " She has 
 been disobeying doctor s orders again and running 
 away. I have with difficulty brought her back." 
 
 Mrs. Eve, a sweet^faced woman of Quaker ante 
 cedents, regarded Sally anxiously: " Thee looks 
 tired, child," she said, and then turning to the 
 boys, " Joseph, pour out some cordial for thy sister, 
 and William, thee had best close the window there 
 behind her ; there is a dampness in the evening air." 
 
 Sally laughed at the fuss that was being made 
 about her. " One would think I were an invalid," 
 she protested.
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 123 
 
 When tea was finished and cleared away, the 
 boys went out to do some last things about the 
 farm, Mrs. Eve seated herself beside the table and 
 the candle-light with her knitting, and Sally and 
 the doctor went over to Sally s little spinet. 
 
 Sally began running her fingers gently over the 
 keys, and the doctor sat beside her, listening to her 
 playing with half-closed eyes. What a fair sight 
 this was before him the candle-lit room, the books 
 upon the shelves, the pictures on the wall, Mrs. 
 Eve beside the table with her knitting, and the 
 dear girl at the spinet ! And how terrible the 
 thought that this fair sight must so soon be 
 marred ! 
 
 What were the words Sally s sweet voice was 
 singing ? 
 
 " My true love hath my heart, and I have his, 
 By just exchange one for another given : 
 I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss ; 
 There never was a better bargain driven ; 
 
 My true love hath my heart and I have his. 
 
 " His heart in me keeps him and me in one, 
 
 My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides : 
 He loves my heart for once it was his own, 
 I cherish his because in me it bides ; 
 
 My true love hath my heart and I have his. " 
 
 Sally ended and looked at the doctor, a soft 
 light shining in her e^ es. Her hands went out to 
 his and his lips touched her forehead.
 
 124 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 " That song was writ for you and me, Sally," he 
 whispered. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " Sir Philip Sydney wrote 
 it for us two hundred years ago." 
 
 A moment later they turned to Mrs. Eve at the 
 table. " I will join you with my knitting, mother," 
 Sally said, " and the doctor shall read to us." 
 
 She went immediately to get her knitting and, 
 when she was gone, the doctor walked over to the 
 table slowly but resolutely. He stood beside it, 
 looking down at Mrs. Eve. The weary expression 
 was in his eyes and something like compassion 
 too. 
 
 " How has Sally seemed to you of late ? " he 
 asked, rather abruptly. 
 
 Mrs. Eve was counting her stitches. She waited 
 to finish her count, and then answered, without 
 raising her eyes, " A little tired and listless, but 
 she has complained of no pain since the last at 
 tack. I think that she is better." 
 
 The doctor s lips tightened, and when he spoke, 
 it was with a great effort. 
 
 " T is hard to be a doctor and see the future," 
 he said. 
 
 Mrs. Eve looked up quickly, apprehensively, 
 from her knitting. His expression even more 
 than his words alarmed her. " Thee does not 
 mean thee does not fear " she faltered. 
 
 The doctor answered with sad eyes and with a 
 lowering of his head. His hand went out across
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 125 
 
 the table to hers and held it, for a moment, in a 
 firm, steadying clasp. Then, "Sally is coining 
 back," he said in warning tones under his breath. 
 
 Sally entered with a light, free-and-easy step, 
 her work-bag swinging on her arm. "You look 
 like a pair of conspirators," she commented gayly, 
 sitting down beside the table and taking her knit 
 ting from her bag. 
 
 Her needles began to click industriously. There 
 was something very beautiful in her sweet uncon 
 sciousness, her childlike absence of all suspicion. 
 " I hope you have decided what you are going to 
 read to us^professorf" 
 
 She spoke the last word with an amused pucker 
 of the lips and a sly glance over at the doctor ; 
 ever since the doctor had been made a professor of 
 the Medical College of Philadelphia, along with 
 other older and more experienced physicians, his 
 title had been a joke with Sally and a matter of 
 pride as well. 
 
 The doctor smiled at the word. He, too, had 
 taken a seat beside the table, and at Sally s ques 
 tion he began looking over the books ranged before 
 him. 
 
 " T is for you ladies to decide," he said. " Here 
 is an interesting array : The Adventures of the 
 Renowned Don Quixote, Cumberland s Fashion 
 able Lover, a prodigious fine comedy, I under 
 stand, did you not say so, Sally? Godfrey s 
 poems, several familiar-looking little volumes with
 
 126 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 Shakspere s name upon the cover, and last but not 
 least Poor Richard s Almanac an excellent 
 variety. Which will you choose ? " 
 
 " Mother will say the Almanac, by all means," 
 declared Sally. " She thinks that a most wonder 
 ful production and was much shocked the other- 
 day when I boasted that I could publish one as 
 good, did I but take it into my head to set down 
 the exact time of the rising and setting of the sun 
 every day, the southing of the moon, and how often 
 the wind changed, adding to this tally a collection 
 of some few recipes, old sayings, and scraps of 
 poetry. I really think I shall have to bring out a 
 Poor Sally s Almanac some day, if only to prove 
 to my mother that she overestimates Poor Richard 
 and underestimates her own daughter. Why do 
 you look at me so queerly, mother? Am I be 
 coming too saucy, too impudent? And Sally s 
 eyes gazed into her mother s questioningly, teas- 
 ingly, fondly. 
 
 Mrs. Eve s eyes dropped to her knitting, and the 
 faint glimmer of a smile lighted her gentle face. 
 " I know thee loves well to plague thy mother, 
 Sally, because of her liking for Poor Richard, " 
 she said. 
 
 Dr. Rush glanced at Mrs. Eve admiringly. He 
 blessed that calmness, that quiet courage that was 
 her heritage from a long line of Quaker ancestors. 
 She would help him, he reflected, to keep from 
 Sally the knowledge of her fate.
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 127 
 
 But he realized how hard it must be for Mrs. 
 Eve just now, with that same knowledge fresh 
 upon her, to meet Sally s merry banter. He wished 
 to save her as much as possible. " Sally," he inter 
 posed, " for shame, to tease your mother so ! 
 Wait, I will turn your mocking laughter to tears 
 by reading to you from the sad stoiy of Romeo 
 and Juliet. " 
 
 " Romeo and Juliet " was the poem of Shak- 
 spere s that Sally and the doctor had read oftenest 
 together. The sufferings of those ill-starred lovers 
 were very interesting to them in their happy, hope 
 ful love. The little worn volume, which in the 
 days of its newness had been a present from him to 
 her, had gone with them on many of their wander 
 ings to the shadowy retreats and secret corners of 
 the farm, and the mayflowers, gathered in early 
 spring and pressed between the leaves, which now 
 looked out at him, shedding a perfume as sweet 
 and sad as the memory of a hope departed, re 
 minded him of the time, not very long ago, when 
 Sally had been well and strong and when, in his 
 thoughts of the future and of her, he had not yet 
 travelled to the valley of the shadow. 
 
 That night, in the candle-lit room, conscious 
 always of the nearness of that mysterious valley, 
 he read a new meaninofin the immortal lines. For 
 
 O 
 
 the first time he realized the pathos of the last 
 parting of the lovers, the cruelty of their divided 
 fates which death only could unite.
 
 128 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 
 
 During the reading it was a reading of favorite 
 passages, of course time would not permit a reading 
 of the whole poem Mrs. Eve slipped away. The 
 doctor wondered in which of the rooms above she 
 was sitting by herself, learning to face her sorrow. 
 
 He was alone with Sally. He looked across to 
 where she sat, and felt, more keenly than ever 
 before, how inexpressibly sweet was the charm of 
 her presence and her sympathy. As he read the 
 poet s beautiful thoughts, he watched their reflec 
 tions in her face and he found the reflections more 
 beautiful than the thoughts themselves. 
 
 When he had finished, Sally looked up with tears 
 in her eyes. " You have read it wonderfully," she 
 said. And when he made a move to go, she 
 quoted smilingly, " Wilt thou be gone ? It is not 
 yet near day. 
 
 She went with him to the door to say a last 
 good-night. He, as he stood on the porch looking 
 back to her in the doorway, noticed that the light 
 from the hallway behind her made a halo of her 
 golden crown. " My queen is fast becoming a 
 saint," he reflected sorrowfully. 
 
 The thought brought him back to her side. 
 There must be one more good-night. He took her 
 in his arms and gazed tenderly, searchingly, into 
 her upturned face. He saw that her mind was 
 busy with some serious thought. " Sally, sweet 
 heart, of what are you thinking ? " he asked. 
 
 " Of Romeo and Juliet," she answered. " I was
 
 THE PASSING OF A SWEETHEART. 129 
 
 thinking of how fortunate they were, how much 
 more fortunate than their hateful, quarrelsome 
 families. Their families never really lived. But 
 Romeo and Juliet they loved and lived." She 
 looked into the doctor s face, a wonderful smile 
 broke in the dark depths of her eyes. " And I " 
 she said. " Do you know, dear, if I should die to 
 morrow, I would not care so very much ; for I 
 too have loved, I have really lived." 
 
 That happened in midsummer. The first snow 
 of winter was on the ground when Sally died. 
 There were those who said that the white flakes as 
 they fell from heaven were not more pure than the 
 sweet soul just ascended. 
 
 Shortly after Sally s death a touching tribute to 
 her memory appeared in the " Pennsylvania Pack 
 et." It was rumored to have been written by " the 
 pen of her afflicted lover." " But alas for the con 
 stancy of man ! " says the record, " the same paper 
 not so very long after gives notice of the marriage 
 of Dr. Benjamin Rush to Miss Julia Stockton," 
 and we are later informed that the doctor made a 
 most devoted husband and an affectionate father. 
 
 Here the record ends. It does not tell us what 
 were the doctor s thoughts as, many an evening, he 
 looked westward to a little star dimly shining 
 above the last rose flush of the dying day. Perhaps, 
 could we know the thoughts the little star inspired, 
 we would not believe that Sally was forgotten.
 
 VIII. 
 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 " WELL, ladies, what is the verdict ? Is the 
 Mischianza to be termed a success ? " 
 
 It was John Andre" who spoke, and the ladies he 
 addressed were several of the ladies of the Blended 
 Rose and Burning Mountain who, escorted by their 
 knights, had retired from the dance awhile, to re 
 fresh themselves with sips of ice-tea and lemonade, 
 and such other cooling drinks as were to be had, on 
 pretty little garden tables, in the hall adjoining the 
 ball-room. 
 
 A feminine chorus of " Oh s " and " Ah s," and 
 more words equally appreciative greeted the Cap 
 tain s question. The knights and other gentlemen 
 who were in attendance on the ladies laughed at 
 their pretty enthusiasms and one, not a knight 
 either of the Blended Rose or Burning Mountain, 
 but an undisguised British colonel resplendent in 
 red coat, gold epaulets, and ribboned orders, Colonel 
 Johnson of the twenty-eighth, he who was soon to 
 marry the witty Miss Franks behind whose chair 
 he was standing, remarked somewhat dryly with a 
 humorous lift of the brows, " It appears that you 
 ladies do not entertain the same opinion of the 
 
 J30
 
 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 131 
 
 Mischianza as does a certain acquaintance of mine, 
 an old artillery officer at headquarters." 
 
 The ladies raised inquiring eyes to the Colonel, 
 and John Andre" asked smilingly, Does the old 
 gentleman disapprove ? " 
 
 " So I should judge from his language," answered 
 the Colonel. " I overheard a child ask him the 
 difference between the Knights of the Mountain 
 and the Rose, and the old officer replied, Why, 
 child, the Knights of the Burning Mountain are 
 torn-fools and the Knights of the Blended Rose 
 are damn fools I know of no other difference 
 between them. " 
 
 The men laughed at the story. But the ladies 
 protested. That any one should use such lan 
 guage of their knights ! It was shocking, shame 
 ful ! They were loud in their praises of the heroes 
 of the Blended Rose and Burning Mountain. 
 
 The heroes bowed low. The commendations of 
 their ladies were verj "ratifying to them, they re 
 marked. Andre, however, shook his head and 
 regarded the assembled femininity with rallying 
 glance. 
 
 " They are all for us now, gentlemen," he said, 
 turning to the men. "But how will it be when 
 the stern fortune of war calls us hence and our 
 places in fair Philadelphia are taken perchance by 
 the colonial troops ? " 
 
 " Your places in fair Philadelphia may be taken, 
 but not your places with us ! " cried one loyal
 
 132 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 maiden. " No, indeed ! " echoed a second. And a 
 third, fairer than the rest, of lily-like grace and 
 dignity, and of a bright, vivacious smile, declared 
 with a mock tenderness designed to tease, " We will 
 keep our hearths burning for you always." 
 
 " Do, Miss Peggy," said Andrd, leaning over the 
 chair of the last speaker, whose favor he wore on 
 his coat, and whose colors, white, pink, and red, 
 like his own, declared her to be the lady in whose 
 honor he appeared that evening as a knight of the 
 Blended Rose. "And at the hearths that are to 
 burn for us always," he continued, " will you not 
 appoint certain objects to represent us the poker, 
 the tongs, and the shovel, for instance ? I should 
 feel surer of my place, I think, if I knew that 
 something was serving as a perpetual reminder of 
 me." 
 
 Miss Peggy smiled at the Captain s earnest 
 trifling. " We have Dutch tiles at our house, you 
 remember," she remarked, looking up with merry 
 glance into his face. " You may choose Bible char 
 acters for your representatives if you prefer." 
 
 " Perhaps Bible characters would be more digni 
 fied," he rejoined, "would give us more prestige 
 with you ladies." He turned to the men with 
 charming enthusiasm. " Tarleton, you shall have 
 Moses to represent you and De Lancey here shall 
 have Adam, and I will have " 
 
 "Balaam s ass?" sweetly inquired a voice from 
 the vicinity of Colonel Johnson.
 
 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 133 
 
 Andre* laughed good-naturedly and answered 
 without looking, " Miss Franks has said it. 
 Balaam s ass shall represent me. I hope you will 
 treat the poor animal kindly, Miss Peggy." He 
 laughed again. His laugh was infectious and 
 every one joined in it. 
 
 In the lull that followed the general merriment 
 Major Tarleton, the most dashingly handsome of 
 all the officers present, and whose costume, the 
 orange and black that designated him a knight of 
 the Burning Mountain, was deemed vastly becom 
 ing by the ladies, raised his glass high in air and 
 addressed the men, " A health to the ladies of the 
 Burning Mountain and Blended Rose, gentlemen," 
 he cried. 
 
 The gentlemen responded gallantly. But when 
 the health had been drunk, Miss Peggy remarked 
 with a look of sly challenge for those who drank, 
 " T is to us that you drink now, but soon our 
 healths will be forgotten and you will be drinking 
 to the ladies of Baltimore, or of New York, or of 
 Boston with the same heartiness with which you 
 now drink to us." 
 
 "Never," came in chorus from the gentlemen, 
 and Major Tarleton declared, " T will be our 
 Philadelphia friends, even when Philadelphia and 
 all its charming citizenesses have been left far 
 behind ; eh, Andre* ? " 
 
 " Indeed, yes," echoed the Captain. " Here s 
 to the ladies of the Rose and the Mountain, as to-
 
 134 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 night so again and again Major Tarleton will cry. 
 * With all my soul, I will exclaim. Allons, will 
 respond Johnson, De Lancey, and the rest. The 
 draft will seem nectar, and the libation made, we 
 will talk upon the uncloyiug theme of the charms 
 of the fair Philadelphians, and so beguile many a 
 gloomy hour when we are far from you." 
 
 " What smooth tongues these gentlemen have ! " 
 commented Peggy in a loud whisper behind her 
 fan to Miss Redman, the young woman who sat 
 next her, and over her fan her eyes peered up laugh 
 ingly into the faces of the English officers. 
 
 Miss Redman nodded, and she also retired 
 behind her fan. " One would think to hear them 
 talk," she responded, " that they had found Phila 
 delphia pleasanter than any other city in the 
 land." 
 
 The officers smiled down upon the whisperers, 
 and Andrd declared, with the earnestness and en 
 thusiasm that made his merest nothings so delight 
 ful, " And so we have in very truth. What your 
 witty Dr. Franklin said of our general may be said 
 of all our officers. T is not so much that we have 
 taken Philadelphia as that Philadelphia has taken 
 us. Is not that so, gentlemen ? " And he ap 
 pealed to his companions in arms, who straightway 
 added their protestations to his. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the ball-room adjoining, sets were 
 forming for the quadrille, and several gentlemen in 
 search of their partners were approaching the
 
 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 135 
 
 merry group of which Andrd and Miss Peggy 
 were members. Presently Miss Franks went off 
 from the group leaning on the arm of Sir William 
 Howe, and Peggy followed with Lord Rawdon. 
 
 As the two couples entered the ball-room, Sir 
 Henry Clinton was heard calling upon the grena 
 dier band, that accompanied the dancers, to play 
 " Britons, strike home ! " 
 
 "Britons, go home, you mean," corrected Miss 
 Franks, her dark eyes flashing fun as they passed 
 Sir Henry. 
 
 A general laugh ensued. It was impossible to 
 resist Miss Franks wit. Even the subjects of it 
 were captured by it. 
 
 Miss Peggy observed a smile on her partner s 
 habitually frowning countenance, and with a sly 
 look she inquired, "Does your lordship approve 
 of such a rebel speech ? " 
 
 His lordship, still smiling, shrugged his shoul 
 ders. " If a man had said that," he remarked, " he 
 would have swung for it ; but a woman says it and 
 is applauded a proof, Miss Chew, that while we 
 are endeavoring to subjugate the men of this 
 country we are being enslaved by the women." 
 
 Miss Peggy Chew laughed gayly in answer. The 
 gallantry and homage which she was receiving that 
 evening were very pleasing to her. She moved 
 through the measures of the quadrille, the minuet, 
 and the Sir Roger de Coverley, her head held 
 high, her lips smiling, and her eyes dancing with
 
 136 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 satisfaction and delight. She liked it well, that 
 scene of extravagant frivolity, the lights, the music, 
 the slow, graceful movement of the dances, the 
 splendor of the crimson coats and brocaded gowns, 
 the glitter of jewels, epaulets, and medals, the 
 passing reflections in the mirrors, the scent of per 
 fume, and the dust of powder shaken from queue 
 and head-dress that were in the air. The color, 
 the life, the fun of it all charmed her. 
 
 She entered with spirit into the small talk that 
 was the order of the occasion. She discussed the 
 latest cricket match with one officer, and with 
 another she condoled upon the loss of his pet 
 spaniel. She commented upon the apparent cruelty 
 of Dr. Shippen in denying his daughters, Peggy s 
 friends, the pleasure of taking part in the Mischi- 
 anza ; the girls, she asserted, were in a " dancing 
 fury," and thought their papa had chosen an in 
 opportune time and a most unpleasant way of 
 showing his rebel sentiments. She wondered with 
 the rest of the Mischianza world as to whether 
 Lord Cathcart s flirtation with Miss Eliot would 
 end in an .engagement. She hoped so for Miss 
 Eliot s sake, she declared, for the girl was in 
 earnest and t would be a pity if she should be 
 obliged to learn that " tender looks are meant but 
 to deceive." 
 
 Most of all Peggy talked about that of which 
 she and all with whom she talked were a part 
 the Mischianza itself, the magnificent fete that was
 
 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 137 
 
 honoring Sir William Howe who was so soon to 
 resign his command and return to England. The 
 regatta on the river that began the fete, its colors, 
 its streamers, and its loud salutes was dwelt 
 upon and praised. So, too, was the mock tourna 
 ment between the Knights of the Rose and the 
 Mountain that had followed the regatta. The 
 decorations of the ball-room were admired, and the 
 costumes of the knights and ladies. 
 
 " T was all Andre s work," one after another 
 remarked to Peggy. " We never could have done 
 the thing but for Andre. There never was a more 
 clever man than he with the pen, the pencil, and 
 the brush." 
 
 And Peggy secretly rejoiced in the praises of 
 her knight and was proud to think that she was 
 the chosen lady of one who was so universally 
 regarded as " the charm of the company." 
 
 With the rest of that throng of joyous men and 
 women that the Mischianza had assembled, Peggy 
 applauded the display of fireworks which, in the 
 midst of the dancing, called them to windows, 
 doors, and porches to learn in letters of light amid 
 bursting balloons and rockets that the Lauriers " 
 of the departing general " Sont Immortels." 
 
 At midnight supper was announced. Folding 
 doors, that had been " artfully concealed," parting, 
 disclosed what was termed by the company "a 
 magnificent saloon." Pier-glasses and branches 
 of lights festooned with garlands of ribbon and
 
 138 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 artificial flowers adorned the walls ; lustres hung 
 suspended from the ceiling ; side-boards abundantly 
 heaped with goodies stood in niches in the wall ; 
 tables promiscuously placed were lighted with 
 numerous waxen tapers ; negro slaves in turbans 
 and oriental costumes with silver collars and brace 
 lets stood about the tables in readiness to serve ; 
 and a hidden orchestra was heard playing, softly, 
 romantic strains of music. About the whole there 
 was an air of mystery and enchantment. 
 
 All through supper Peggy chatted vivaciously, 
 merrily. From her place at the general s table, 
 beside Andre", " the bright particular star " of the 
 evening, surrounded on all sides by rank and fash 
 ion, wit and beauty, she distributed her smiles and 
 glances with the grace that designated her a social 
 queen. In that scene of brilliance and frivolity 
 she was in her element, and the gay world about 
 her was the gayer for her charming presence. 
 
 The supper hour wore to a close. At the last 
 the healths of the King, the Queen, the Royal 
 Family, the Army and the Navy, the General and 
 the Admiral, the Knights and their Ladies were 
 proclaimed by a herald and drunk by the assembled 
 company. The hidden orchestra played " God 
 Save the King," which was chorused by all present. 
 Some of the guests returned to the ball-room. 
 Others, of whom were Peggy and Andre", still lin 
 gered in the supper room. 
 
 Presently Montressor, the chief engineer of the
 
 A STRAIN FROM THE M1SCHIANZA. 139 
 
 army and one of the four managers of the fete that 
 evening, turned to Andr6 and said, " Our friend, 
 Captain Andre, ivS, as usual, in excellent spirits this 
 evening. We all know what a delightful song 
 bird he is. Will he not favor us on this present 
 great occasion ? " 
 
 The suggestion was greeted with applause, and 
 Andre", smiling his thanks upon the company, rose 
 and answered : " Yes, Captain Montressor, I am in 
 excellent spirits this evening, as who could help but 
 be on such an occasion and in such company. It will 
 give me great pleasure to comply with your request. 
 I will sing the old camp song, the soldiers favorite 
 and, if I mistake not, the ladies favorite as well. 
 
 He sang : 
 
 u i Why, soldiers, why 
 
 Should we be melancholy, boys? 
 
 Why, soldiers, why, 
 
 Whose business t is to die ? 
 
 For should next campaign 
 
 Send us to Him who made us, boys, 
 
 We re free from pain ; 
 
 But should we remain, 
 
 A bottle and kind landlady 
 
 Makes all well again. 
 
 Why, soldiers, why 
 Should we be melancholy, boys? 
 Why, soldiers, why, 
 Whose business tis to die? 
 What sighing? Fie ! 
 Drown fear, drink on, be jolly, boys, 
 T is he, you, or I. "
 
 140 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 He sang the song with sweetness and pathos. As 
 Peggy listened, the real meaning of the scarlet 
 coats and gold epaulets about her, a meaning that 
 she had quite forgotten all that evening, in the 
 midst of the dancing, the feasting, and the general 
 merry-making, was brought home to her. She 
 thought of these men, whom she now saw appar 
 ently so care-free and debonair, on the battlefield, 
 fighting, wounded, dying. She glanced up at 
 Andre", his dark, handsome face lighted with a 
 serious, almost a sad look, an accompaniment of 
 his song, and the memory of a dream she had had 
 only a short while before concerning him came 
 over her with a vividness that frightened her. 
 She experienced a sudden revulsion for the glitter 
 and gorgeousness about her. The multitude of 
 lights and mirrors, the draperies of flags and gar 
 lands of flowers, the elaborate costumes of the 
 men and women, the smiling faces, the flow of 
 laughter and of flippant talk became to her a 
 mockery, a mask to veil the real grimness and 
 hideousness of war. 
 
 She begged to be excused when partners came 
 claiming her hand for the dances following sup 
 per. With Andr6 at her side she stepped out 
 upon the vine-clad porch that led from the dance 
 hall. 
 
 " You are tired," said Andre, looking with gentle 
 solicitude into her face. 
 
 "A little," she answered.
 
 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 141 
 
 " The garden will rest you," he declared. " Let 
 us find a seat in some quiet corner." 
 
 They went slowly down the garden path between 
 rows of box and hemlock. All about them lanterns 
 dangled from the trees, giving the place a look of 
 fairyland. Behind them was the house, a large 
 stone mansion formerly the country seat of a quiet 
 Quaker gentleman whose very shade must have 
 blushed at the magnificence of the house that 
 evening. It was one blaze of brilliancy, and from 
 the open doors and windows dance strains floated 
 down to them. Before them lay the river, dark 
 and tranquil, flecked with numerous glimmerings 
 of light from the galleys and fiat boats that were 
 at anchor there. It was a mild, pleasant night, that 
 eighteenth of May of the year 1778. A gentle 
 breeze was stirring the leaves, and the air of the 
 garden was sweet with the blended fragrance of 
 pine and apple-blossoms. 
 
 Peggy found the sweet air and the darkness re 
 freshing. Her peace of mind returned and she ceased 
 to think of the grimness and hideousness of war. 
 
 " How tall and straight the pine-trees are," she 
 remarked softly. 
 
 " Like cathedral spires," said Andre* ; and she 
 knew he must be thinking of his home. 
 
 They found the quiet corner and in its seclusion 
 sat down upon a garden seat that stood there. 
 They were silent for a while, enjoying the fairness 
 of the night and of the scene about them.
 
 142 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 Then Peggy observed, " I suppose you will write 
 of : all this to England? " 
 
 He nodded. "My pen will never do justice 
 to the ladies and their gowns," he declared. 
 " T would take a god to describe them." 
 
 " Cupid ? " she inquired, smiling. 
 
 Andre looked at her with answering smile. 
 " A moment ago you were Penserosa, Now you 
 are L Allegro," he said. 
 
 "I never should have been Penserosa," she 
 answered contritely, " for if ever there was a time 
 made for the jest and youthful jollity, and 
 the wreathed smiles of which the poet sings, t is 
 to-night." 
 
 " Is it not splendid ! " exclaimed Andre*, with 
 enthusiasm. " Do you know, Miss Peggy, it seems 
 to me that to-night should be classed among those 
 moments of which Rousseau has said, There are 
 moments worth ages. " 
 
 " Yes," said Peggy, " and let us hope life will 
 hold many such moments for us." Then, after a 
 pause, " How interesting life is," she declared, 
 " and how mysterious when we try to look into the 
 future ! " A dreamy, far-away expression stole 
 over her face as she spoke. 
 
 " You seem to be looking into the future now," 
 declared Andre*. " Tell me, what do you see ? " 
 
 " T is easy enough to see things for you, Cap 
 tain Andre*," she answered. " Look," with a wave 
 of her hand as if to draw back a curtain from be-
 
 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 143 
 
 fore fate s picture gallery. "There are military 
 glory and the applause of your king and country, 
 and a brigadiership, and, I do believe, a baronetcy 
 as well." She turned to him with a merry laugh. 
 "How do you like my fortune-telling?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " You are a most delightful sibyl, Miss Peggy. 
 I would that you had the ordering of my fate." 
 
 Peggy laughed again, and Andrd asked her, " But 
 what do you see for yourself? Pray look again 
 into the future and tell me that." 
 
 Peggy shook her head. " Look for me," she 
 said. 
 
 "I dare not," declared Andrd. "I am afraid 
 that I might see some officious, blue-jacketed 
 colonel looming up in the distance." 
 
 " You need not be afraid," responded Peggy. 
 "I am sure no blue-jacketed colonel would dare 
 show his face when Captain Andrd was around." 
 
 She avoided the Captain s eyes as she spoke. It 
 was rather a dangerous game, that at wliich she and 
 he were playing. One never knew when jesting 
 might pass into seriousness. 
 
 Suddenly she became interested in the trees 
 about her. " Oh, see ! " she exclaimed. " What 
 pretty blossoms ! " and she pointed to the blos 
 soms in an apple tree not far away. 
 
 Captain Andrd, like the true knight-errant whose 
 costume he had assumed that evening, immediately 
 sprang forward to get them.
 
 144 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 But Peggy protested. " Nay, do not try to 
 reach them," she said, " they are too high." 
 
 Andre", however, regardless of silken hose and 
 satin breeches, had already swung himself up 
 among the branches, and as Peggy went and stood 
 on the ground below, a shower of pink and white 
 fragrance fell at her feet. And from above, 
 Andrd s voice came down to her, quoting reminis- 
 cently and as if to himself, a verse from a playful 
 little epigram that he had composed upon seeing 
 her one day among the branches of a tree in the 
 garden of Cliveden, Peggy s home : 
 
 " But had the tree of knowledge bloomed, 
 Its branches by such fruit perfumed 
 As here enchants my view, 
 What mortal Adam s taste could blame, 
 Who would not die to eat the same, 
 When gods might wish a Chew ? " 
 
 Peggy gathered up the blossoms that had fallen, 
 and looking into the branches, declared in soft, 
 laughing tones, " The fruit is on the ground this 
 time, Captain Andrd. You must come down if you 
 wish a Chew." 
 
 " Coming," said Andrd. In his descent he hung 
 a moment upon a branch, that was quite high from 
 the ground, before dropping. Peggy stood gazing 
 up at him, the blossoms in her hands. Suddenly 
 his attitude and his face as it shone white in the 
 darkness, startled her, recalling more vividly, even,
 
 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 145 
 
 than his song at supper had recalled, the dream that 
 she had had concerning him. She gave a low, in 
 voluntary cry, and sank upon the garden seat, un- 
 consciously letting the blossoms fall from her 
 hands. 
 
 The next instant Andre was at her side. " Miss 
 Peggy ! he exclaimed, in profound concern, look 
 ing into her face, and again, " Miss Peggy, are you 
 
 No, she was not ill, she protested, trying to laugh 
 and not succeeding very well. Then something 
 had frightened her, Andre queried anxiously ; and 
 when she did not reply, pray what had frightened 
 her, he asked. Peggy avoided answering ; Captain 
 Andre* need not be concerned for her, she said, 
 twas nothing, only a little faint turn that had 
 passed ; indeed, she was ready to return to the 
 ball-room now, was quite rested ; would Captain 
 Andre* be so kind as to conduct her thither. Andre* 
 gazed at her wonderingly ; he was her knight, he 
 answered, and as such was hers to command in what 
 soever way she pleased. However, neither he nor 
 she made a move to go. 
 
 At length, after a long pause, Peggy remarked, 
 " You are thinking me very silly, Captain Andre*. 
 I have a mind to tell you what frightened me." 
 
 She had regained her composure and spoke 
 quietly, looking into Andre s eyes steadily, and with 
 a suggestion of appeal in her glance. " T was that 
 I just now saw something which reminded me of a
 
 146 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 dream I had recently concerning you. Your friends 
 tell ine you are a rash as well as a brave soldier. 
 Perchance my dream may serve as a warning to you 
 and cure you of your rashness." 
 
 She tried to speak lightly and playfully, yet she 
 was conscious all the while that there was an un 
 disguised seriousness in her tone. The truth was 
 that, though not ordinarily a superstitious person, 
 she had been thoroughly frightened by her dream. 
 It was impossible for her to make a jest of it. She 
 looked away from Andre*, who was still gazing at 
 her wonderingly and, it seemed to her, soothingly 
 as well. She supposed he must observe something 
 unnatural in her manner. 
 
 " You are thinking me very silly, Captain 
 Andre," she said again. 
 
 " Nay," he answered gently, " I am thinking that 
 you are tired and nervous. Tell me your dream, 
 Miss Peggy, t will lose whatever of horror it may 
 possess for you when once it is told. Do not be 
 afraid of frightening me. I have no fear of dreams," 
 and he ended with a reassuring laugh. 
 
 Peggy was encouraged by his words and by his 
 voice and manner as well. " I will tell you," she 
 said. " But remember, the dream is to serve as a 
 warning to you and is to cure you of your rash 
 ness." 
 
 Then, with her hands clasped loosely in her lap 
 and her eyes gazing off through the vista of trees 
 to the glimpse of river in the distance where, it
 
 "YOU ARE THINKING ME VERY SILLY, CAPTAIN ANDRt."
 
 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCIHANZA. 147 
 
 seemed to her, the lights on the river shone like so 
 many fallen stars, she told her dream. 
 
 " I dreamed," she said, " of a place which I have 
 never seen in reality, a place surrounded by woods 
 and hills, and near a river with cliffs on the further 
 shore. I dreamed that it was autumn and the 
 woods were red and gold and there was a haze on 
 the hills. A great crowd was assembled in this 
 place and into their midst came soldiers, soldiers in 
 blue, bringing with them a prisoner in a scarlet 
 coat. The prisoner s face I could not see. I dreamed 
 that they hung the prisoner in the scarlet coat, 
 while the waiting crowd stood round, silent and 
 pitiful. When all was over and I looked up, I 
 saw the face of the prisoner. Captain Andre, the 
 face was yours." 
 
 For a moment after Peggy had finished, Andr 
 did not speak. She began to wonder whether or 
 not she had done right to tell her dream. 
 
 Presently she heard him say in his accustomed 
 quiet voice and with a touch of playful irony, " T is 
 a strange fact, Miss Peggy, that you are not the only 
 one who has dreamed of seeing nie hung. Several 
 of my friends have done the same for me. But I 
 hope to disappoint their dreams and yours. I have 
 no desire to die with the spy s halter about my neck. 
 T is my wish to die in the press and storm of battle ; " 
 and under his breath he added, " In whatever way 
 I die, I trust that it may be as a brave man." 
 
 " Do not talk of dying, Captain AiidreY Peggy
 
 148 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 interrupted hurriedly, and with a tremor of sub 
 dued emotion in her voice ; " you make me repent 
 that I did tell my dream." 
 
 " Ah, Miss Peggy, give not another thought to 
 that dream. Who am I, or who is my dream self 
 that we should disturb Miss Peggy s peace of 
 mind ! Andr spoke with the note of playful 
 irony still in his voice and with a sadness, too, that 
 seemed to Peggy like the sadness of farewell. 
 
 She raised her head and gazed at him through 
 the darkness, questioningly, searchingly, fearfully. 
 Was the dream disturbing him as it had disturbed 
 her, she wondered. Was it true, what had been 
 hinted by men jealous of Andre s popularity and 
 success in the army, that he had run the risk of 
 dying the death of which she had dreamed as com 
 ing to him ? Would he, perchance, run that same 
 risk again ? And did he feel the ignominy of such 
 a risk, and was that the reason why, with his proud 
 spirit, though loving all women, he would permit 
 himself to love no one woman best? 
 
 " Captain Andre*," she asked, in a low voice, 
 " would you serve as a spy ? " 
 
 " Yes, if I believed that to do so was my duty 
 and would gain me distinction in the army," he 
 answered, simply and honestly. 
 
 Peggy continued to gaze at him through the 
 darkness. There was a suggestion of horror in her 
 glance, for she was not without her share of the 
 general opinion entertained towards spies, and there
 
 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 149 
 
 was pity too, but most of all there was admiration. 
 To what heights or to what depths would this 
 man s devotion to duty as a soldier and his love 
 of glory carry him, she wondered. She felt that, 
 for the first time in her acquaintance with him, 
 she knew him, and understood something of what 
 his life, with its ardent ambitions and daring 
 ventures, really was. The Mischianza and the 
 ladies with whom he danced, and even the lady 
 whose knight he was and whose favor he wore 
 over his heart, were necessarily but trifling parts of 
 that life, she determined. 
 
 With a quickly drawn breath she rose from the 
 garden seat, and Andre* rose with her. 
 
 She looked away. " What it is to be a man ! " 
 she said, with a thrill in her voice. " And I I 
 can only dance." 
 
 Then, with a sudden change from seriousness to 
 lightness, glancing over her shoulder at him and 
 smiling, she took the first position of the minuet, re 
 marking with the {esthetic languor of an eighteenth- 
 century belle, " Will you be so good as to conduct 
 me back to the ball-room, Captain Andre* ? " 
 
 History does not tell us what were the feelings 
 of Peggy Chew on that second day of October of 
 the year 1780 when her dream came true, and 
 John Andre* met his tragic death on the russet hill 
 side near the village of Tappan. We may well 
 believe that they were sorrowful.
 
 150 A STRAIN FROM THE MISCHIANZA. 
 
 That Peggy never ceased to speak of Andre* 
 with admiration we know, and we know too that 
 the verses and songs which he wrote in celebration 
 of her charms, and his account of the Mischianza 
 which he dedicated to her, were treasured by her 
 to her death, and on her death were bequeathed as 
 precious legacies to her daughter. 
 
 Her daughter ? Yes for Peggy married. She 
 married, too, a blue-jacketed colonel, "the hero of 
 Cowpens, " just such a blue-jacketed colonel, no 
 doubt, as poor Andre had feared to see looming up 
 in the distance of Peggy s future. 
 
 This blue-jacketed colonel husband of Peggy s 
 was a patriot of the patriots. He never listened 
 with very good grace, we are told, to Peggy s 
 praises of Andre*. He could not forget that Andre* 
 had been an enemy to the cause for which he him 
 self had fought and suffered, and perhaps too he 
 was a trifle jealous of the man who had once 
 tenderly inscribed himself, " Miss Peggy s most 
 devoted knight and servant." 
 
 At any rate, and whatever may have been the 
 causes of his cherished hostility, it is a tradition 
 among the descendants of Peggy and the Colonel 
 that whenever these two were entertaining guests 
 at their charming Baltimore home and Peggy would 
 fall to talking of Andre" and declare, " He was a, 
 most witty and cultivated gentleman," the Colonel 
 would interrupt testily, " He was a damned spy, 
 my friends, notli. ag but a damned spy."
 
 IX. 
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 BREAKFAST was waiting. The pot of steaming 
 chocolate was on the table, and the bread and 
 butter, and the fruits from the garden. It was 
 just such a simple repast as had often graced the 
 breakfast table of the little farmhouse at Braintree, 
 and to the Adamses, always democratic and unas 
 suming in their tastes, it was as acceptable in their 
 Grosvenor-square mansion as in that other less 
 pretentious dwelling. 
 
 The women of the family, Mrs. Abigail and 
 Miss Abby, were already in their places. They 
 looked very fresh and tidy in their spandy morning 
 caps and gowns. Only the seat at the head of the 
 table was vacant. 
 
 "I wonder what can be keeping your father 
 notv" Mrs. Adams remarked. There was a note 
 of weariness in her voice which implied that her 
 question was not a new one. 
 
 " Oh, probably some petition, or commission, 
 or private application, " sighed Abby. " We 
 must wait until they be served. An ambassador s 
 family are ever the slaves of his profession." 
 
 Abby s air of stoic resignation was amusing. 
 
 151
 
 152 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 Mrs. Adams looked at her and smiled. Through 
 a long and rigorous course of training these women 
 had learned to laugh at the little worries and vexa 
 tions that assail the wife and daughter of a politician. 
 
 There were a few more moments of waiting. 
 Mrs. Adams readjusted the top of the chocolate 
 pot, and rearranged the cups and saucers. Abby, 
 from her seat at the table, gazed out of the window 
 at the bright October world without. There was 
 a far-away look in her eyes. She was thinking, 
 as she had often thought before, how much the 
 centre of Grosvenor square, that open space op 
 posite, its several acres of sunny greensward, its 
 spreading trees, and its umbrageous walks, resem 
 bled Boston Common. 
 
 " Only not so nice," she reflected. Abby had a 
 great deal of what her English acquaintances called 
 provinciality, but what her American friends knew 
 to be patriotism. 
 
 Presently the door opened and Mr. Adams 
 entered, in his hand a packet tied and sealed. 
 Straightway the breakfast was forgotten, and the 
 women made a rush upon him with the glad cry, 
 " Letters ! Letters from home." They could for 
 give him fifty times over for being late to breakfast, 
 if he brought letters with him. 
 
 Mr. Adams was a tease. He must needs cut the 
 chord and undo the packet of letters very leisurely. 
 " Here is one for you, my dear," he said, turning 
 to Mrs. Adams, " and here, Miss Abby, are three,
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 153 
 
 four, upon my word, five for you, and more yet for 
 your mamma. And where, pray, does the old gen 
 tleman come in ? I see he will fare but slenderly. 
 Only one for me." 
 
 Then began the unsealing and the reading. The 
 chocolate grew cold. The bread and butter and 
 the fruit went untasted. The ceremony of eating 
 was quite forgotten. In those days of slow travel 
 ling and hazardous voyages, the arrival of letters 
 from across the sea was an event to make trifles of 
 the ordinary customs of life. 
 
 Abby read her letters in the order of preference, 
 with a wise forethought that savored of her Puritan 
 ancestry, reserving the best till the last. The first 
 three were from certain young lady friends and 
 cousins of hers left behind in her Braintree home. 
 They contained many inquiries about her health 
 and happiness, the latest European fashions, and 
 her acquaintance with foreign life and foreign 
 customs. When she returned, she was informed, 
 she must be prepared to be regarded as a pattern 
 in everything. Going abroad gave one such con 
 sequence. How did she like the English ladies? 
 Did they compare favorably or unfavorably with 
 the French demoiselles? Her Braintree friends 
 were dying to hear the particulars of her presenta 
 tion at court. What did she wear? How did she 
 like their majesties, and the prince and princesses ? 
 In their fancy they could see her making her rever 
 ence to royalty. What of the fashionable courtesy ?
 
 154 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 They had heard it was low and slow. They sup 
 posed she had learned to make it with the perfec 
 tion of grace and ease. Would she teach it to 
 them when she returned? They imagined she 
 would laugh most heartily at their little bobs and 
 dodges. They were certain her brother, Master 
 J. Q. A. (whom, by the way, they were delighted 
 to welcome to his native shore), had laughed at 
 them inwardly though he was outwardly so grave 
 and kind. What a wonderful young man her 
 brother was ! so wise, so talented, so accom 
 plished, so altogether superior. They quite stood 
 in awe of him. They had begged him to tell 
 them when their dearest Abby would return. But 
 the young man was non-commital. He had an 
 swered them with a sigh and a jest, hoping it 
 would be before they were all married ladies. 
 They sincerely hoped that it would, for their dear 
 est Abby must know husbands were not to be had 
 in Braintree ; they wanted to see her once before 
 they died. They assured her of their unchanging 
 love and loyalty, and they signed themselves de 
 votedly hers. 
 
 Abby finished the first three letters and laid 
 them aside with a fond smile. " Dear girls ! " she 
 reflected, with that na ive Puritanism of spirit 
 which was sometimes her charm and sometimes 
 her fault, " they little realize how superior is 
 their simplicity to the foreign airs and graces 
 which they so long to imitate."
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 155 
 
 She pictured her young lady friends and cousins 
 surveying her brother with looks of admiration and 
 wonder, noting all the details of his costume from 
 the length of his periwig to the size of his shoe 
 buckles, and approaching him with the reverence 
 due a young man who had travelled and lived in 
 foreign lands, who had visited foreign courts, 
 libraries, and picture galleries, and who had basked 
 in the smiles of kings, queens, and emperors. 
 
 She saw her brother gentle and courteous in 
 their midst, yet holding himself aloof with that 
 proud consciousness of superiority which she knew 
 must offend all those who recognized it. " I shall 
 have to lecture John," she determined. " I feared 
 his grand ways might make the girls feel ill at ease 
 in his presence ; " and she opened his letter with an 
 elder sisterly severity of manner, but with an eager 
 ness that showed she was a very proud and adoring 
 elder sister. 
 
 She had a treat in her brother s letter. Like all 
 the Adams letters to one another, this particular 
 letter from John Quincy to his sister was full of 
 original comment, interesting detail, and loving 
 remembrance. It told of his return to their beloved 
 Massachusetts, whither he had gone expressly for 
 the purpose of finishing his education in the college 
 of his fathers. He did not regret, he said, the de 
 cision that had brought him home. He felt as he 
 had always felt, that Harvard was the one college 
 for him ; that it was wrong for a man to receive
 
 156 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 his education in any other place than the country 
 where he was to live. His preferring to return 
 home had surprised a number of his young ac 
 quaintances there, more than it would probably, 
 did they know as much of Europe as he did. He 
 had seen their dear brothers. Charles was coin 
 ing on well in his studies and Tom was a good, 
 industrious little fellow. Their aunt and uncle 
 had done well by them. He had paid a Sunday 
 visit to Braintree (immediately Abby was there 
 with him in spirit) and had attended meeting twice. 
 He would never have believed that the parson s 
 voice, looks, and manners would have seemed so 
 familiar to him. He thought while the man was 
 preaching that he had listened to him every Sun 
 day, without interruption, for years. As he looked 
 round the meeting-house, every face above thirty 
 he knew, but scarcely one under thirty his own 
 generation had certainly changed beyond recogni 
 tion. In the afternoon he had been to take a look 
 at their old home, the well-remembered farmhouse. 
 As Abby reached this point in the letter, a wave of 
 homesickness and longing went over her. When 
 would she see the dear old place again, she won 
 dered. Would they ever all of them be gathered 
 together under its roof once more ? Her brother s 
 sensations on beholding it so deserted and forlorn 
 were such that he could not stay ten minutes in its 
 neighborhood. He was determined, he said, not to 
 visit it again before the familv s return. The letter
 
 IX THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 157 
 
 then took a more cheerful tone. Abby was in 
 formed of the fetings, the tea-drinkings, the dinner 
 parties, and the balls with which he was welcomed 
 home. He wrote enthusiastically in praise of the 
 scholars and politicians who entertained him, but 
 upon his young countrywomen, the far-famed 
 belles of New York and Boston, he passed pungent 
 strictures. Oh, that the women of his land were as 
 distinguished for the beauty of their minds as they 
 were for the charms of their person ! But, alas, 
 too many of them were like a handsome apple in 
 sipid to the taste. They thought it beneath them 
 to know anything but to dance and to talk scandal. 
 Complete nonsense was a word not expressive 
 enough of the insipidity and absurdity that gov 
 erned their conversations. Here Abby must needs 
 smile at her brother s severity. " He writes like a 
 graybeard," she reflected laughingly. " I shall 
 have to teach him to be more lenient to the foibles 
 of his countrywomen." She was nearing the end 
 of the letter which dwelt upon his thoughts of her 
 and of their father and mother. "Compliments 
 are an inadequate means of expression for those we 
 love," he said, and he signed himself affectionately 
 her brother, J. Q. A. 
 
 Abby laid her brother s letter aside with those 
 already read. " John may be a trifle opinionated 
 and austere like the rest of the family," she com 
 mented, " but he is a dear brother." 
 
 There still remained one letter unread, the best
 
 158 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 one, which she had reserved for the last. Oddly 
 enough, this was the only letter that did not come 
 from America. One would suppose that so loyal 
 an American as Miss Abby prided herself that she 
 was would have preferred American news to for 
 eign news. Abby colored at the thought. " Ah, 
 but the letter was written by an American," she 
 reflected. That excused her. She turned the 
 letter over and glanced at her name and address 
 and thought that they looked well written in such 
 a large, bold hand. Would she read the letter 
 now or wait until she was alone? She feared 
 her mother s saucy tongue and her father s love of 
 teasing. She slipped the letter in the waist of her 
 gown and looked askance at her parents. She was 
 half ashamed, half proud to have this secret from 
 them. 
 
 Mrs. Adams had arrived at the last page of her 
 last letter and Mr. Adams was reading with her 
 over her shoulder. 
 
 " Mother," said Abby, with prim dignity, " may 
 I be pardoned if I go now? I have much to do 
 this morning." 
 
 Mrs. Adams looked up from her letter in some 
 surprise. "Why, Abby, child," she remarked, 
 " you have not had your breakfast yet ; " and Mr. 
 Adams gave his daughter a glance of keen scrutiny 
 and inquired which of her letters had gone to her 
 head. 
 
 Abby felt herself grow rosy. She wished she
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 159 
 
 had not been so precipitate; but she held up 
 her head bravely and answered pertinently that 
 it appeared she was not the only one who had 
 forgotten breakfast that morning. Whereupon 
 they all laughed. 
 
 Mr. Spruce, the butler, was summoned, the cold 
 chocolate was removed, another pot of steaming 
 chocolate was brought in, and breakfast proceeded 
 in due form. 
 
 "Abby," called her mother, when at last the 
 ceremony of eating was accomplished and Abby 
 was returning to her room. 
 
 Abby paused on the threshold. Her heart sank. 
 Was there to be another interruption? Would 
 she never be allowed to go away and read her let 
 ter in peace ? 
 
 " I shall want you to drive into Cheapside with 
 me this morning to visit the shops," said her mother. 
 " Will you be ready to start by eleven o clock ? " 
 
 "Yes, mother," answered Abby, meekly. Her 
 heart rose again. She was glad that eleven o clock 
 was more than an hour away. 
 
 Abby s room was on the east side of the house 
 and overlooked the garden. She found it flooded 
 with the morning light and seeming like what she 
 often called it, her sun-bower. There were flowers 
 in the windows and in the vases on the mantel 
 shelf, and the chintz with which the bed was hung 
 and the chairs upholstered was of a pretty pink and 
 white flower design. The windows were curtained
 
 160 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 and several fine etchings hung on the wall, and over 
 the mantel was a pastel portrait of John Quincy 
 Adams at the age of sixteen. In the centre of the 
 room stood a large table on which were books, 
 writing materials, and a basket filled with needle 
 work. The room was unmistakably that of a young 
 girl, a young girl who loved sunshine, books, pict 
 ures, needlework, and flowers. 
 
 Abby seated herself in her favorite chair beside 
 the window that looked out upon the garden, and 
 proceeded to open her letter. Her eyes fell on the 
 first word and immediately a light, quick and trans 
 forming, came into her face. Abby s habitual ex 
 pression had always been rather prim, almost severe. 
 It was as though the spirit of a long line of clerical 
 forefathers looked out of those serious gray eyes. 
 To be sure, the arched brows gave a certain piquant 
 charm and the smile that lurked about the mouth 
 showed a quaint humor that could be gentle, 
 roguish, or satirical as occasion demanded. Yet 
 the piquant arch of the brows and the faint smile 
 were but parts of the habitual primness of expres 
 sion. Abby was decidedly a New England girl, a 
 daughter of the Puritans, and the stamp of her 
 stern ancestry was in her face. Then, however, 
 under the spell of that first magic word and those 
 other magic words that came after, primness and 
 severity vanished. A new and unusual sweetness 
 was born in her face, the sweetness begotten of love. 
 
 "Sweetheart," she read, "I am coming back. I
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 161 
 
 had almost said home, for in my heart I call that 
 home where you are. By the evening of the day 
 this letter reaches you I shall be with you. Be a 
 little glad to see me, I pray you. I shall he so very 
 glad to see you. Thou little Puritan, how art 
 thou? Art thou as stern as ever? Oh, Abby, I 
 have not forgotten your many severities and sar 
 casms. They have become dear to me. Loving 
 you as I do, I must love them as well. And, Abby, 
 I warn you, I have grown brave since that last 
 afternoon together in the garden. Gird on your 
 armor of frowns and sharpen that formidable weapon 
 your tongue. You will have need of them; for 
 there is coming a soldier who is determined to fight 
 for the possession of your heart as the knights of 
 old fought d routrance, to the death, one who is 
 always faithfully yours. W. S. S." 
 
 She read the letter twice, three times. Then 
 with the new light in her face and the new happi 
 ness in her heart she sat dreaming, looking out of 
 her window into a world that seemed to her new 
 and very beautiful. 
 
 She had loved Colonel Smith, she told herself, 
 almost from the time of their first meeting when, 
 in the early spring of that same year, he had made 
 his advent in the Adams home, in the character of 
 Mr. Adams secretary. She remembered him the 
 evening of his arrival, tall, dark, and of an erect, 
 soldierly bearing, standing in the hall with her 
 father as she came down the stairs.
 
 162 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 Her father had presented him to her and the 
 Colonel had bowed low over her hand, remarking 
 that he understood he had usurped her office (Abby 
 had been doing much of her father s writing for 
 him) and hoping that she would not punish him as 
 some usurpers had been punished. She had as 
 sured him that his head was safe so far as she had 
 any power over it, and he had answered with 
 another low bow, that now he had seen her, he 
 realized that t was his heart which was endangered. 
 Abby, whose Puritan nature always resented ilat- 
 tery, had thought this a rather flippant and pre 
 sumptuous remark. She had not smiled, but had 
 looked gravely away. Afterwards, however, she 
 had excused it, as she would excuse a fault in one 
 she loved, by way of proof of her love. 
 
 And, as it had been with Abby and the Colonel 
 at first, so it had been throughout their whole ac 
 quaintance. She was continually thinking him 
 flippant and presumptuous, and disapproving of 
 him and yet as continually excusing him. She 
 could not have given herself better proof of Tier 
 love for him. 
 
 Yes, she had loved him from the first, again 
 she told herself. But he had never guessed. He 
 had thought her cruel when she was in reality 
 all kindness towards him. And now he was com 
 ing to take her heart by storm. He did not know 
 that t was his already. Abby smiled at the 
 thought, a smile that was a reminiscence of the
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 163 
 
 quaint humor that had always been hers and a 
 suggestion of the new sweetness as well. 
 
 From her seat at the window she looked down 
 into the garden and thought of the last time he and 
 she had been there together, the day before he left 
 England on a mission for her father to the conti 
 nent. It was October now. The leaves were 
 beginning to fall, the vines were a red mantle on 
 the garden wall, and the only flowers still blooming 
 were marigolds and asters. But Abby did not see 
 the garden as it was. She beheld it glowing in the 
 glad June sunlight and exhaling a delicious 
 summer warmth and fragrance. The roses and the 
 honeysuckle were in bloom, the cherries were ripe, 
 and butterflies went by in golden flashes. 
 
 She saw herself seated on a rustic bench in the 
 shadow of a cherry-tree. Her garden hat and her 
 garden gloves were thrown aside, and on the 
 ground at her feet was a basket to receive the 
 flowers which Colonel Smith was gathering. 
 
 The labor of gathering did not proceed as quickly 
 as it might. The Colonel must needs make fre 
 quent pauses to rest against the wall and look at 
 Abby. 
 
 Abby observed his dallying with apparent dis 
 pleasure. "I thought you came into the garden 
 to pick roses for me, Colonel Smith," she remarked, 
 severity in her tone. " If you are so slow I shall 
 be forced to dismiss you and do the picking myself." 
 
 The Colonel resumed his picking reluctantly,
 
 164 JJV THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 and Abby gave grave directions : " Longer stems, 
 if you please, Colonel Smith. There, that will do 
 of the white roses. Now you may begin upon the 
 red ones, if you are not too tired," the last was 
 uttered with mock compassion. 
 
 Colonel Smith smiled at her sarcasm, and sang 
 as he tossed the roses into her lap and into the 
 basket at her feet. His voice was strong and 
 sweet, the strain was one of ardent melody, and 
 the words were those of the passionate shepherd to 
 his love. 
 
 Abby listened with downcast eyes. The song 
 charmed her. Yet, when it was finished, she raised 
 her eyes and remarked primly, " T is a foolish 
 song. None but a silly love would be tempted by 
 ivory tables, silver dishes, a cap of flowers, 
 and a kyrtle of myrtle leaves. A wise love would 
 prefer ordinary wood and china, straw hats, and 
 cambric gowns." 
 
 The Colonel knit his brows as though in desper 
 ation. " Oh, that eternal practicality ! " he sighed. 
 " It shatters all my air castles." 
 
 " They are best shattered," said Abby. " Air 
 castles are generally unfit places for habitation." 
 
 She picked up her hat and gloves preparatory to 
 departure. But the Colonel stopped her. He 
 captured hat and gloves, and stood before her, an 
 opposing presence. "Pray, do not go yet," he 
 entreated. "I want to say good-by. Have you 
 forgotten, Abby? I am going away to-morrow."
 
 JN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 165 
 
 "I have not forgotten," she answered. She 
 looked away, and when he hesitated to speak she 
 raised her eyes to his in calm inquiry. "I am 
 waiting for you to say good-by," she said coolly. 
 
 " How can I when you look so stern ? " 
 
 " I cannot change my face, Colonel Smith." 
 
 "I would not have you," he exclaimed, with 
 quick ardor, and then, after a pause, a despairing 
 note in his voice, " You make a coward of me, 
 Abby." 
 
 Abby looked surprised incredulity. "I would 
 not have supposed that he who had once been aid- 
 de-camp to General Washington could ever be a 
 coward," she said. 
 
 " The English army was but a trifle to you." 
 
 Abby smiled at his wild exaggeration. But his 
 tone pleased her. " Am I so formidable ? " she 
 asked. Her eyelids quivered, and her hands made 
 a fluttering motion among the roses in her lap. 
 
 "Very," he answered, seating himself beside 
 her. After a brief pause that was eloquent with 
 meaning, he leaned forward and looked up into 
 her face. " Those air castles that you so despise, 
 did you never build any ?" he inquired. 
 
 Abbv nodded, smiling. " I am not always prac 
 tical," she said. 
 
 " Is there a place for me in your air castles ? " 
 His voice came to her as though from a distance, 
 low and pleading. 
 
 Abby longed to answer as her heart prompted,
 
 166 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 but the dread that he might be jesting stopped her. 
 "You have your own castles to inhabit," she 
 declared. 
 
 " Ah, but I have made you queen in all my air 
 castles," came the response. " I am bold. I would 
 be king in yours." 
 
 Abby shook her head, hesitatingly. Her eyes 
 were on the flowers in her lap. " Air castles are 
 so easily blown over," she rejoined. " You had 
 best choose a more substantial dwelling." 
 
 "Might I find a place in your heart? " he ven 
 tured. He was still bending forward, looking up 
 with tender longing into her face. 
 
 Abby s eyes met his. She was on the point of 
 yielding. But the old disapproval of what she 
 deemed his flippancy and presumption asserted 
 itself. She feared that his wooing, which had 
 so charmed her, was not quite earnest and sincere. 
 
 "You are overbold," she said distantly, rising 
 and gathering up her hat and gloves. 
 
 There had been no more words between them. 
 She had gone on to the house and he had followed 
 after, with the basket of roses. It had been a sad 
 ending to a happy time. 
 
 That June day seemed long ago now. Abby 
 did not like to think of the weeks that followed. 
 They had been dreary weeks for her. She put all 
 memory of them from her and lost herself in a 
 bright dreamland of the future. 
 
 " Abby," presently her mother s voice called
 
 /:V THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 167 
 
 from without the room. " T is half after ten. I 
 hope that you are dressing." 
 
 Abby woke to the present with a start and a 
 little laugh for her own abstraction. She had quite 
 forgotten Cheapside and the shops. And, as she 
 recollected, she decided that the world of which 
 they were a part was but a humdrum world compared 
 with the new world which she had just discovered. 
 
 Paulette, the French maid, entering the room a 
 few moments later, found her young mistress en 
 gaged at her toilet and smiling to herself as she 
 dressed. Paulette assisted in the arranging and 
 powdering of Miss Abby s hair, in the putting on 
 of her pink muslin gown, its flounced underskirt 
 of lutestring and its kerchief of white gauze, and 
 in the donning of her black silk mantle and grace 
 ful leghorn hat. 
 
 Then, when the costume was complete, she 
 stood off to admire, while Miss Abby surveyed 
 herself critically in the long mirror. 
 
 "Ah, man Dieu, tis provoking," remarked the 
 little French woman with a long-drawn sigh. 
 
 Abby turned quickly from the mirror to her 
 maid, expecting to hear that there was something 
 wrong about her dress. " Why, what is the matter, 
 Paulette ? " she inquired. " What is provoking ? " 
 
 Paulette shrugged her shoulders and dropped 
 her eyes in subtle flattery. "Mademoiselle look 
 so pretty, I so mauvaise," she explained. 
 
 Abby s brows knit in a slight frown expressive
 
 168 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 of her dislike of idle compliment. " Nonsense, 
 Paulette," she said. " I am not pretty." 
 
 She spoke without coquetry, sincerely, frankly. 
 She knew she was not pretty. And yet she was 
 not wholly displeased with the reflection that met 
 her gaze in the long mirror. She did not see a 
 beauty, but she saw a high-bred lady, whose costume 
 represented mode, whose aristocratic air gave dis 
 tinction, and whose quaint, interesting face pos 
 sessed a charm beyond that of mere prettiness. 
 To-day her eyes were shining and her cheeks glow 
 ing, and the smile would not leave her lips. It 
 was the new glory that suffused her face. 
 
 Her mother was waiting for her in the coach. 
 She rallied Abby for being so long at her toilet. 
 " But you look very fine, my dear," she observed, 
 with an approving smile. 
 
 Mrs. Adams, as usual, was in a merry, conversa 
 tional mood. As she and Abby rolled along in 
 their grand English coach, which was ever a source 
 of amusement to them because of its grandeur 
 (they had not been used to riding in a coach in 
 their Braintree home), she kept up an animated 
 flow of talk. She spoke of the shops and of what 
 she was going to buy, of the objects of interest 
 along the way, of the play of the night before, and 
 most of all of the letters she had received that 
 morning. She was very bright and entertaining. 
 But Abby was unusually silent. She replied to 
 her mother s remarks abstractedly and at random.
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 169 
 
 Down Piccadilly to the Strand they, drove and 
 along the Strand to Fleet street, from Fleet street 
 over Ludgate Hill and through St. Paul s church 
 yard to Cheapside. They were a part of an unend 
 ing train of coaches and of post-chaises, of market 
 carts and huge West-country wagons, all bound for 
 the heart of the great city. 
 
 They passed the homes of rank and fashion, long 
 rows of stately mansions, the parks, the play-houses, 
 and the coffee-houses. At length they came into 
 the enchanted region of the shops. 
 
 Here was a world of wonders. Waxen ladies of 
 ineffably sweet countenances and gentlemen of 
 luxuriant mustachios smiled from the windows of 
 drapers shops and mercers shops upon the pass 
 ers-by, and by the magnificence of their costumes 
 gave proof of the excellence of the linen goods and 
 cotton goods, the silks and satins to be had within. 
 In the wig-maker s windows life-like busts with 
 shining glass eyes and brilliantly painted cheeks 
 wore head-dresses of such surpassing loveliness 
 that the whole wig-wearing populace must stop to 
 admire and, if possible, to buy. In the boot 
 maker s windows rows of gentlemen s buckled shoes 
 faced as many rows of ladies high-heeled slippers, 
 the shoes seeming to invite the slippers to tread a 
 measure of the minuet with them, shoes and slip 
 pers together in their unrivalled beauty soliciting 
 the patronage of all beholders. Little gilded Bac- 
 chuses perched upon bacchanalian barrels pro-
 
 170 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 claimed the wine-seller s shops, and mysterious- 
 looking bottles, red, green, and yellow, casting a 
 lurid light, announced the chemist s shops. There 
 was the iron-monger s shop, with his radiant 
 fenders, andirons, and candlesticks ; the cabinet 
 maker s, with his French polished mahogany and 
 his chintz furniture ; the tobacconist s with his 
 twisted clay pipes, his pig-tail tobacco, and his 
 elegant snuff-boxes ; the green-grocer s, the butch 
 er s, the baker s, the tailor s, the bookseller s, and 
 the picture seller s, all variously interesting and 
 alluring. Some of the shops were new and on a 
 level with the street, were uniformly numbered, and 
 boasted sash-windows ; but there were others, older 
 and less pretentious, which were below the level of 
 the street and were approached by a downward 
 flight of steps ; their windows were many-paned, 
 and, in place of a number, an old sign-board with 
 painted symbol, creaking on its hinges, desig 
 nated the shop as that of " The Golden Fleece " 
 or "The Golden Key," or "The Bible and the 
 Crown," or something equally incongruous and 
 charming. 
 
 Abby s interest in the shops had always been 
 very great. They had seemed to her, accustomed 
 all her life to the primitive simplicity of a New 
 England village, places of almost magic fascina 
 tion. To-daj r , however, their attraction for her 
 was something vague and shadowy. She saw them 
 and was conscious of their many delights, but she
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 171 
 
 did not give much heed. She was preoccupied 
 with her own sweet fancies. 
 
 And as of the shops so of the throng of shoppers, 
 Abby was only partially observant. She bowed 
 and smiled quite as usual to her acquaintances, 
 English and American, whom she chanced to see, 
 but if any of them stopped beside the coach to chat 
 a moment she left the burden of talking to her 
 mother. Now and then, however, when Mrs. 
 Adams went into some shop without her and she 
 was left alone in the coach and was accosted by 
 some friendly spirit, she must needs collect her 
 thoughts and converse quite as though to-day were 
 any other day. 
 
 She found herself composing small-talk with a 
 certain Mr. Randall, employed in the service of 
 the American embassy, who was making his com 
 pliments to her at the coach window. A girl with 
 a veil on went by, and Abby remarked upon the 
 custom prevailing abroad of wearing gauze veils. 
 Mr. Randall, with a meaning glance at Abby, 
 observed that the blush of innocence was a better 
 veil. Abby, true even in small-talk to her Puritan 
 severity, smiled somewhat satirically and said she 
 feared there were few veils of that sort worn in 
 London and fewer still in Paris. Mr. Randall, 
 who was aware of Abby s former residence in Paris 
 and of her knowledge of the French language, in 
 quired if they had any word in the French language 
 expressive of innocence. Abby replied there was
 
 172 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 only the one word " innocence" and that was almost 
 without use there. Then she remarked with a 
 sigh that she considered blushing a very unpleasant 
 sensation. She thought it would be to one s ad 
 vantage to be exempt from that attribute of inno 
 cence. Mr. Randall declared that he was not of 
 her opinion. 
 
 Mrs. Adams returned to the coach. The shop 
 ping was over for that day, she announced. They 
 were driving home. If Mr. Randall was going 
 their way they would be very glad of his company. 
 Mr. Randall was going their way. He got into 
 the coach with them, and as it was discovered he 
 had business with Mr. Adams, he was brought 
 home to dinner with them. 
 
 " But," said Mrs. Adams, holding up a warning 
 finger as they descended from the coach, "you 
 must not bring business to the table. It interferes 
 with digestion." 
 
 The dinner was a merry one. The day, accord 
 ing to the French calendar, was le jour des rois, 
 and a pie baked in its honor had been prepared by 
 the French cook. Mrs. Adams rose to explain its 
 significance. " This pie, my friends," she said, 
 " contains a bean, and whoever in the cutting is 
 so lucky as to obtain the bean, that one is dubbed 
 king or queen." 
 
 The pie was passed to Abby. She cut, but got 
 no bean. Next, Mr. Randall took his turn, but 
 the bean fell not to his lot. Mrs. Adams then
 
 AV THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 173 
 
 separated her slice, protesting that she had no 
 cravings for royalty and was in no wise disap 
 pointed that the bean came not to her. Mr. Adams 
 watched the division of the pie in silence, and when 
 the remaining half was passed to him he took his 
 knife and, with a few bold slashes, dissolved the 
 poor paste to crumbs. From the ruins he picked 
 out the bean and displayed it with a flourish. 
 " And thus," he cried, " are kingdoms obtained." 
 
 All through dinner Abby joined in the general 
 laughing and talking. Yet she was conscious all 
 the while of a remoteness from the others. It was 
 that same feeling of having entered a new Avorld 
 compared with which the world of dining, as the 
 world of shopping, was but humdrum. 
 
 It was the same after dinner when she sat in 
 the drawing-room entertaining callers. The social 
 world, she decided, was even more humdrum than 
 the worlds of dining and shopping. 
 
 The conversation that Avas going on about her 
 seemed to her more than usually stupid. In one 
 part of the room her mother was discussing politics 
 with Dr. and Mrs. Jebb, English people who pos 
 sessed a profound admiration for America. Abby 
 heard them, wondering as usual at her mother s 
 absorbing interest in politics. She had not in 
 herited that interest. In another part of the room 
 her father, with his hands locked behind him, stood 
 surveying the new portrait of himself by Copley. 
 He was not at all satisfied with it, he was inform-
 
 174 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 ing the gentleman at his side, but twas the best 
 that had ever been taken of him. No artist had 
 yet succeeded in catching his character. The 
 ruling traits in his character were candor, probity, 
 and decision, but no one would suppose so to 
 judge from any of his portraits. Abby caught 
 enough of what he was saying to wish that he 
 would stop. She hated to have her father talk in 
 that pompous fashion about himself. She realized 
 that people criticised him for doing so, and she 
 who knew what was best in him could not endure 
 to have him criticised for what was worst. 
 
 " Yes," she said, in answer to the question which 
 was being put to her by a certain Miss Bancroft, 
 a somewhat supercilious young English-woman 
 whose patronizing ways always aggravated Abby, 
 " I like England very well." 
 
 " You ought to like it," declared Miss Bancroft 
 with smiling condescension, "for t is very evi 
 dent that England likes you," and then, in almost 
 the same breath, " Which do you like best, England 
 or France ? " 
 
 This was an interrogation to which Abby would 
 never respond, though it had been asked of her every 
 day since her arrival in England. She used to 
 laugh in her sleeve at the very apparent jealousy 
 existing between the two countries, observing that 
 the English sought ever to imitate the French as the 
 French to imitate the English. 
 
 She replied to the question now as always with a
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 175 
 
 degree of tact surprising in one of her candid charac 
 ter. " I really cannot give the preference to either," 
 she said. " They are both charming countries." 
 
 Then, "Of course you prefer England to 
 America," declared Miss Bancroft, more as though 
 she were stating a fact than as though she were 
 making an inquiry. 
 
 At this Abby forgot diplomacy. Her patriotism 
 was roused. " I must confess that I do not," she 
 said sturdily. 
 
 " Is it possible ? " exclaimed Miss Bancroft with 
 a glance of incredulity from under arched eyebrows. 
 "But certainly you must find a great difference 
 between America and this country ? " 
 
 "In what, pray?" inquired Abby, putting on 
 her armor of primness and severity. 
 
 "Why, in the people, their manners, customs, 
 behavior in everything." Miss Bancroft ended 
 with a nervous little laugh as though she were a 
 trifle frightened by Abby s stern expression. 
 
 " Indeed, there is no great difference," retorted 
 Abby. " We have, strange as it may seem, as 
 much civility, culture, and refinement as the Eng 
 lish ; and our middle and lower classes are infinitely 
 superior to yours." 
 
 Abby certainly had something of her father s 
 courage. It quite routed her English adversary, 
 who was glad to take ,,,refuge in talk of a less 
 dangerous character. 
 
 Some one in the company reminded them of Sir
 
 176 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 Charles Grandison, and they entered upon a lively 
 discussion of Richardson s novel of that name. 
 After they had praised the novel they praised the 
 author. Richardson certainly had a perfect knowl 
 edge of the human heart, they decided, and Mrs. 
 Siddons, they agreed, was not far behind him in 
 that knowledge. They had both been to the play 
 the night before to see the celebrated actress in 
 "Othello." She was "inimitable," "incompar 
 able." Their rhapsodies over her (even so severe 
 a critic as Abby could rhapsodize over Mrs. Sid- 
 dons) only ended with Miss Bancroft s departure. 
 
 Abby drew a long sigh of relief as the door closed 
 upon the last caller. She glanced at the tall clock 
 in the hall. It was already six. In two hours, or a 
 very little more, Colonel Smith would be there. Her 
 spirits rose with the thought. A sudden gayety, 
 quite foreign to her nature, possessed her. 
 
 At the tea table. her father observed that she was 
 unusually merry. " What makes you so happy, 
 Miss Abby ? " he inquired playfully. 
 
 Abby did not know, she said. She thought it 
 might be the letter she had received that morning 
 from her brother. Her eyes dropped to her tea-cup 
 and the color deepened in her cheeks. She had 
 never been so artful never. 
 
 Her mother and father glanced at her suspiciously 
 and then exchanged looks of amused understand 
 ing. It was just possible that Abby s artfulness 
 had betrayed her.
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 177 
 
 That evening, after tea, they were all assembled 
 in the drawing-room. Mr. Adams, seated in his 
 easy chair on one side of the table, was reading 
 Plato s Laws ; Mrs. Adams in her easy chair on the 
 other side was industriously writing letters ; and 
 Abby on a low hassock at her mother s feet was 
 busy with her needlework. She was wearing the 
 pink muslin gown of the morning, with a gauze cap 
 and apron to match the gauze kerchief. As she 
 bent over her work the new sweetness was very 
 visible in her face. 
 
 The door opened and Colonel Smith appeared on 
 the threshold. There was a general expression of 
 surprise at his arrival and yet no one was really 
 surprised, certainly not Abby. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Adams were warmly cordial hi 
 their welcome. But, with the exception of one 
 quick smile of recognition, Abby took no part in 
 the greeting. She was silent during the discussion 
 of politics and public affairs that went on between 
 her parents and Colonel Smith. And when her 
 father began to talk private matters with the Col 
 onel, she stole out upon the balcony that over 
 looked the garden. 
 
 The night was mild, almost like one in June. 
 The soft air cooled her hot cheeks and the light of 
 the stars calmed her. She could not have stayed 
 in the room a moment longer, she told herself. 
 She had feared, every time that she felt the Colonel s 
 gaze resting upon her, that her face would betray her
 
 178 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 secret. And she did not wish to betray her secret, 
 not yet, not there in the room with the others. 
 
 She rested her hand upon the balcony s rail and 
 looked off into the night. She saw not only the 
 quiet glitter of the stars. She saw the restless 
 glitter of the torchlit city and the shapes of mighty 
 buildings towering dark and dim against the sky. 
 And she heard a confusion of sounds, shouting and 
 calling, and the rumbling of coaches and of heavy 
 wagons, sounds that fell upon her listening ear as 
 one loud, insistent voice, the voice of a great city. 
 
 Then she looked down into the garden lying so 
 restful, so peaceful, so sweet in the heart of that 
 great city, and she thought thus the soul may build 
 a garden for itself apart from the glare and noise of 
 the world, a garden where rest and peace and 
 sweetness may be found. Her first peep had told 
 her that the garden of love was very beautiful. 
 She would not hesitate to enter there. 
 
 In the room behind her they had come again to 
 politics and were discussing the proposed bill which 
 was to provide for free ports in the West Indies. 
 By the sound of the Colonel s voice, Abby could 
 tell that he had turned toward the door, through 
 which she had come to the balcony. 
 
 At length she heard her mother say with a laugh 
 ing note in her voice, "Do not let us keep you, 
 Colonel Smith, if you are impatient to pay your 
 respects to the stars ; " and then his answer with 
 a deep echo of the laughing note, " Well, to tell
 
 "YOU FIND ME A HARD CONQUEST, SIR KNIGHT."
 
 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 179 
 
 you the truth, Mrs. Adams, I am rather impatient 
 to pay my respects to the stars." 
 
 It appeared that this was the opportunity for 
 which he had been waiting. A moment later he 
 was standing on the balcony beside her. She had 
 not turned at his coming and he said with bold 
 pleading in his tone, " Have you no word of wel 
 come for me, Abby ? " 
 
 She let the hand that he had bent to kiss rest a 
 moment in his clasp. " You are welcome, Colonel 
 Smith," she said quietly, primly. 
 
 " How sweet that one brief sentence sounds, 
 spoken in your voice!" he declared. "I would 
 travel further than I have to hear it." 
 
 She began to question him about his journey, but 
 he interrupted. He would have no dallying. " Did 
 you get my letter ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Were you angry at it ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Or at me ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 Her hand had dropped from his clasp, and lay 
 hidden in the soft folds of her gown, and her face 
 was still in shadow. But the quick rising and fall 
 ing of her bosom stirred the white kerchief at her 
 throat into an unusual tremor. Colonel Smith 
 would see in a moment, he would guess her secret. 
 Already he was looking at her with a longing that 
 was almost understanding.
 
 180 IN THE AMBASSADOR S GARDEN. 
 
 " These brief monosyllables," he asked, " what do 
 they mean, and the new note in your voice ? " 
 
 She turned quickly from the shadow to the 
 brightness from the open door. The poise of her 
 head was proud, but her face was all aglow with 
 the new glory. 
 
 " Abby ! sweetheart ! " was all that he could 
 stammer in the first transport of his happiness. 
 
 She looked up at him, a tall, dark soldier stand 
 ing so far above her, bronzed by his seven years of 
 service in her country s war. A faint smile was 
 on her lips and the love-light shining in her eyes, 
 as she said, with a touch of the old sarcasm, " You 
 find me a hard conquest, Sir Knight." 
 
 Abby never had cause to regret her choice of 
 knight. To the end Captain Smith remained to 
 her a knight like Bayard of old, without fear and 
 without reproach, devoted and true. Abby s life 
 as his lady was a happy life. To be sure, her house 
 in New York was quite like other New York houses ; 
 she went to dinner parties, receptions, and balls like 
 other New York ladies ; and like them had her house 
 keeping and her children to engage her attentions. 
 Extrinsically her life was as prosaic as her name, 
 Mrs. Smith. But intrinsically her life was a poem. 
 The garden that her soul had builded for itself apart 
 from the glare and noise of the world never ceased 
 to bloom for her. Abby walked among its flowers, 
 and in sunshine and in shadow she found it fair.