, madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up at such a moment,"
replied the unknown guest of the province-house, and, courteously
removing his hat, he offered his arm to raise the aged woman. "Yet, in
reverence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith, Heaven forbid that
any here should say you nay. Over the realms which still acknowledge
his sceptre, God save King George!"

Esther Dudley started to her feet, and, hastily clutching back the
key, gazed with fearful earnestness at the stranger, and dimly and
doubtfully, as if suddenly awakened from a dream, her bewildered eyes
half recognized his face. Years ago she had known him among the gentry
of the province, but the ban of the king had fallen upon him. How,
then, came the doomed victim here? Proscribed, excluded from mercy,
the monarch's most dreaded and hated foe, this New England merchant
had stood triumphantly against a kingdom's strength, and his foot now
trod upon humbled royalty as he ascended the steps of the
province-house, the people's chosen governor of Massachusetts.

"Wretch, wretch that I am!" muttered the old woman, with such a
heartbroken expression that the tears gushed from the stranger's eyes.
"Have I bidden a traitor welcome?--Come, Death! come quickly!"

"Alas, venerable lady!" said Governor Hancock, lending her his support
with all the reverence that a courtier would have shown to a queen,
"your life has been prolonged until the world has changed around you.
You have treasured up all that time has rendered worthless--the
principles, feelings, manners, modes of being and acting which another
generation has flung aside--and you are a symbol of the past. And I
and these around me--we represent a new race of men, living no longer
in the past, scarcely in the present, but projecting our lives forward
into the future. Ceasing to model ourselves on ancestral superstitions,
it is our faith and principle to press onward--onward.--Yet," continued
he, turning to his attendants, "let us reverence for the last time the
stately and gorgeous prejudices of the tottering past."

While the republican governor spoke he had continued to support the
helpless form of Esther Dudley; her weight grew heavier against his
arm, but at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient
woman sank down beside one of the pillars of the portal. The key of
the province-house fell from her grasp and clanked against the stone.

"I have been faithful unto death," murmured