ption. A
sound of music was heard without the house, as if proceeding from a
full band of military instruments stationed in the street, playing,
not such a festal strain as was suited to the occasion, but a slow
funeral-march. The drums appeared to be muffled, and the trumpets
poured forth a wailing breath which at once hushed the merriment of
the auditors, filling all with wonder and some with apprehension. The
idea occurred to many that either the funeral procession of some great
personage had halted in front of the province-house, or that a corpse
in a velvet-covered and gorgeously-decorated coffin was about to be
borne from the portal. After listening a moment, Sir William Howe
called in a stern voice to the leader of the musicians, who had
hitherto enlivened the entertainment with gay and lightsome melodies.
The man was drum-major to one of the British regiments.

"Dighton," demanded the general, "what means this foolery? Bid your
band silence that dead march, or, by my word, they shall have
sufficient cause for their lugubrious strains. Silence it, sirrah!"

"Please, Your Honor," answered the drum-major, whose rubicund visage
had lost all its color, "the fault is none of mine. I and my band are
all here together, and I question whether there be a man of us that
could play that march without book. I never heard it but once before,
and that was at the funeral of his late Majesty, King George II."

"Well, well!" said Sir William Howe, recovering his composure; "it is
the prelude to some masquerading antic. Let it pass."

A figure now presented itself, but among the many fantastic masks that
were dispersed through the apartments none could tell precisely from
whence it came. It was a man in an old-fashioned dress of black serge
and having the aspect of a steward or principal domestic in the
household of a nobleman or great English landholder. This figure
advanced to the outer door of the mansion, and, throwing both its
leaves wide open, withdrew a little to one side and looked back toward
the grand staircase, as if expecting some person to descend. At the
same time, the music in the street sounded a loud and doleful summons.
The eyes of Sir William Howe and his guests being directed to the
staircase, there appeared on the uppermost landing-place, that was
discernible from the bottom, several personages descending toward the
door. The foremost was a man of stern visage, wearing a
steeple-crowned hat and a skull-cap