els, and made
ready to receive him. In truth, there was a function, for already a man
of stately mien, and richly dressed, was advancing through the court,
with a staff of men in wigs and laced coats behind him, and a company of
troops at a little distance. Esther Dudley flung the door wide and
dropping on her knees held forth the key with the cry, "Thank heaven for
this hour! God save the king!"

The governor put off his hat and helped the woman to her feet. "A strange
prayer," said he; "yet we will echo it to this effect: For the good of
the realm that still owns him to be its ruler, God save King George."

Esther Dudley stared wildly. That face she remembered now,--the
proscribed rebel, John Hancock; governor, not by royal grant, but by the
people's will.

"Have I welcomed a traitor? Then let me die."

"Alas! Mistress Dudley, the world has changed for you in these later
years. America has no king." He offered her his arm, and she clung to it
for a moment, then, sinking down, the great key, that she so long had
treasured, clanked to the floor.

"I have been faithful unto death," she gasped. "God save the king!"

The people uncovered, for she was dead.

"At her tomb," said Hancock, "we will bid farewell forever to the past. A
new day has come for us. In its broad light we will press onward."

THE LOSS OF JACOB HURD

Jacob Hurd, stern witch-harrier of Ipswich, can abide nothing out of the
ordinary course of things, whether it be flight on a broomstick or the
wrong adding of figures; so his son gives him trouble, for he is an
imaginative boy, who walks alone, talking to the birds, making rhymes,
picking flowers, and dreaming. That he will never be a farmer, mechanic,
or tradesman is as good as certain, and one day when the child runs in
with a story of a golden horse, with tail and mane of silver, on which he
has ridden over land and sea, climbing mountains and swimming rivers, he
turns pale with fright lest the boy be bewitched; then, as the awfulness
of the invention becomes manifest, he cries, "Thou knowest thou art
lying," and strikes the little fellow.

The boy staggers into his mother's arms, and that night falls into a
fever, in which he raves of his horse and the places he will see, while
Jacob sits by his side, too sore in heart for words, and he never leaves
the cot for food or sleep till the fever is burned out. Just before he
closes his eyes the child looks about him and says that he hears th