ar of artillery which announced that the beleaguered
army of Washington had intrenched itself upon a nearer height than
before. As the deep boom of the cannon smote upon his ear Colonel
Joliffe raised himself to the full height of his aged form and smiled
sternly on the British general.

"Would Your Excellency inquire further into the mystery of the
pageant?" said he.

"Take care of your gray head!" cried Sir William Howe, fiercely,
though with a quivering lip. "It has stood too long on a traitor's
shoulders."

"You must make haste to chop it off, then," calmly replied the
colonel, "for a few hours longer, and not all the power of Sir William
Howe, nor of his master, shall cause one of these gray hairs to fall.
The empire of Britain in this ancient province is at its last gasp
to-night; almost while I speak it is a dead corpse, and methinks the
shadows of the old governors are fit mourners at its funeral."

With these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his cloak, and, drawing his
granddaughter's arm within his own, retired from the last festival
that a British ruler ever held in the old province of Massachusetts
Bay. It was supposed that the colonel and the young lady possessed
some secret intelligence in regard to the mysterious pageant of that
night. However this might be, such knowledge has never become general.
The actors in the scene have vanished into deeper obscurity than even
that wild Indian hand who scattered the cargoes of the tea-ships on
the waves and gained a place in history, yet left no names. But
superstition, among other legends of this mansion, repeats the
wondrous tale that on the anniversary night of Britain's discomfiture
the ghosts of the ancient governors of Massachusetts still glide
through the portal of the Province House. And last of all comes a
figure shrouded in a military cloak, tossing his clenched hands into
the air and stamping his iron-shod boots upon the broad freestone
steps with a semblance of feverish despair, but without the sound of a
foot-tramp.

* * * * *

When the truth-telling accents of the elderly gentleman were hushed, I
drew a long breath and looked round the room, striving with the best
energy of my imagination to throw a tinge of romance and historic
grandeur over the realities of the scene. But my nostrils snuffed up a
scent of cigar-smoke, clouds of which the narrator had emitted by way
of visible emblem, I suppose, of the nebulous ob