down the
staircase the sway of Britain was passing for ever from New England,
he smote his clenched hand on his brow and cursed the destiny that had
flung the shame of a dismembered empire upon him.

"Would to God," cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage, "that
the rebels were even now at the doorstep! A blood-stain upon the floor
should then bear testimony that the last British ruler was faithful to
his trust."

The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his exclamation.

"Heaven's cause and the king's are one," it said. "Go forth, Sir
William Howe, and trust in Heaven to bring back a royal governor in
triumph."

Subduing at once the passion to which he had yielded only in the faith
that it was unwitnessed, Sir William Howe became conscious that an
aged woman leaning on a gold-headed staff was standing betwixt him and
the door. It was old Esther Dudley, who had dwelt almost immemorial
years in this mansion, until her presence seemed as inseparable from
it as the recollections of its history. She was the daughter of an
ancient and once eminent family which had fallen into poverty and
decay and left its last descendant no resource save the bounty of the
king, nor any shelter except within the walls of the province-house.
An office in the household with merely nominal duties had been
assigned to her as a pretext for the payment of a small pension, the
greater part of which she expended in adorning herself with an antique
magnificence of attire. The claims of Esther Dudley's gentle blood
were acknowledged by all the successive governors, and they treated
her with the punctilious courtesy which it was her foible to demand,
not always with success, from a neglectful world. The only actual
share which she assumed in the business of the mansion was to glide
through its passages and public chambers late at night to see that the
servants had dropped no fire from their flaring torches nor left
embers crackling and blazing on the hearths. Perhaps it was this
invariable custom of walking her rounds in the hush of midnight that
caused the superstition of the times to invest the old woman with
attributes of awe and mystery, fabling that she had entered the portal
of the province-house--none knew whence--in the train of the first
royal governor, and that it was her fate to dwell there till the last
should have departed.

But Sir William Howe, if he ever heard this legend, had forgotten it.

"Mistress Dudley, why are you