aughter bubbled from her lips.

[Illustration: The Dinner-Party.]

It was a joyful party that sat down to the dinner. The toasts drunk
were not the health of George III. and Sophia Charlotte, but the
health of General George Washington, the Continental Congress, Major
Robert Walden, and, more heartily than any other, long life and
happiness to Ruth Newville Walden.

* * * * *

Years have gone by,--years of sorrow, privation, and suffering to
those who, through their loyalty to King George, and their inability
to discern the signs of the times, have been exiles from the land
that gave them birth, whose property has been seized by the Great and
General Court of Massachusetts. The days are long to Mary Shrimpton in
the little cabin at Halifax. The great estates once owned by her
father are no longer his. Her once beautiful home has been sold to the
highest bidder. Only with her spinning-wheel can she keep the wolf
from the cabin door. Parliament has been talking of doing something
for the refugees in Nova Scotia, but the commoners and lords are three
thousand miles away, and the people of England are groaning under the
burden incurred by the fruitless attempt to subdue the Colonies. The
struggle is over. Lord Cornwallis has surrendered his army to General
Washington at Yorktown, and commissioners are negotiating a peace.
Through the years Abel Shrimpton, unreconciled to life's changes, has
been cursing Samuel Adams and John Hancock for having led the people
to rebel against the king, not seeing that Divine Providence was using
them as instruments to bring about a new era in human affairs. When
the curses are loudest and most vehement, Mary's gentle hand pats his
lips, smooths the gray hairs from the wrinkled brow, and calms his
troubled spirit. Pansies bloom beneath the latticed windows of her
cabin home. Morning-glories twine around it. Swallows twitter their
joy, and build their nests beneath the eves. Motherly hens cluck to
their broods in the dooryard. The fare upon the table within the cabin
is frugal, but there is always a bit of bread or a herring for a
wandering exile. When women pine for their old homes, when
homesickness becomes a disease, it is Mary Shrimpton who cheers the
fainting hearts. As she sits by her wheel, she sings the song sung by
the blind old harper Carolan, who, though long separated from his true
love, yet recognized her by the touch of her gentle hand:--