to check. Turning to the gentlemen present, Mr. Arnett said:
"I beg you will excuse this most unseemly interruption to our council.
My wife is beside herself, I think. You all know her, and that it is
not her custom to meddle with politics. To-morrow she will see her
folly; but now I beg your patience."

But her words had roused the slumbering manhood of her hearers. Each
began to look upon himself as a craven, and to withdraw from the
position he had taken. No one replied to her husband, and Mrs. Arnett
continued. "Take your protection if you will. Proclaim yourselves
traitors and cowards, false to your country and your God, but horrible
will be the judgment upon your heads and the heads of those that love
you. I tell you that England will never conquer. I know it and feel it
in every fiber of my heart. Has God led us thus far to desert us now?
Will He who led our fathers across the stormy winter seas forsake
their children who have put their trust in Him? For me, I stay with my
country, and my hand shall never touch the hand, nor my heart cleave
to the heart of him who shames her"; and she turned a glance upon her
husband; "Isaac, we have lived together for twenty years, and for all
of them I have been a true and loving wife to you. But I am the child
of God and of my Country, and if you do this shameful thing, I will
never again own you for my husband."

"My dear wife!" he cried, aghast, "you do not know what you are
saying. Leave me for such a thing as this?" "For such a thing as
this!" she cried, scornfully. "What greater cause could there be? I
married a good man and true, a faithful friend, and it needs no
divorce to sever me from a traitor and a coward. If you take your
amnesty you lose your wife, and I--I lose my husband and my home!"

With the last words her voice broke into a pathetic fall, and a mist
gathered before her eyes. The men were deeply moved; the words of Mrs.
Arnett had touched every soul. Gradually the drooping heads were
raised, and eyes grew bright with manliness and resolution. Before
they left the house that night they had sworn a solemn oath to stand
by the cause they had adopted, and the land of their birth through
good or evil, and to spurn as deadliest insult the proffered amnesty
of their tyrannical foe.

Some of the men who met in this secret council afterward fought nobly,
and died upon the field of battle for their country. Others lived to
rejoice when the day of triumph came; but