ssing through the door of the province-house as
through the ivory gate of dreams, became metamorphosed into a strange
tale of the prowess of Howe, Clinton or Cornwallis. Sooner or later,
it was her invincible belief, the colonies would be prostrate at the
footstool of the king. Sometimes she seemed to take for granted that
such was already the case. On one occasion she startled the
townspeople by a brilliant illumination of the province-house with
candles at every pane of glass and a transparency of the king's
initials and a crown of light in the great balcony-window. The figure
of the aged woman in the most gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and
brocades was seen passing from casement to casement, until she paused
before the balcony and flourished a huge key above her head. Her
wrinkled visage actually gleamed with triumph, as if the soul within
her were a festal lamp.

"What means this blaze of light? What does old Esther's joy portend?"
whispered a spectator. "It is frightful to, see her gliding about the
chambers and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her company."

"It is as if she were making merry in a tomb," said another.

"Pshaw! It is no such mystery," observed an old man, after some brief
exercise of memory. "Mistress Dudley is keeping jubilee for the king
of England's birthday."

Then the people laughed aloud, and would have thrown mud against the
blazing transparency of the king's crown and initials, only that they
pitied the poor old dame who was so dismally triumphant amid the wreck
and ruin of the system to which she appertained.

Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary staircase that wound
upward to the cupola, and thence strain her dimmed eyesight seaward
and countryward, watching for a British fleet or for the march of a
grand procession with the king's banner floating over it. The
passengers in the street below would discern her anxious visage and
send up a shout: "When the golden Indian on the province-house shall
shoot his arrow, and when the cock on the Old South spire shall crow,
then look for a royal governor again!" for this had grown a by-word
through the town. And at last, after long, long years, old Esther
Dudley knew--or perchance she only dreamed--that a royal governor was
on the eve of returning to the province-house to receive the heavy key
which Sir William Howe had committed to her charge. Now, it was the
fact that intelligence bearing some faint analogy to Esther's vers