As long as
there is a woman left or a child, your task is yet unfulfilled. Make a
personal application of it; I am one of them. Do you wish to
exterminate me, sir?" she said, looking up at him brilliantly, with her
glorious brown eyes.

"Oh, you--you are different, of course," said the lieutenant,
hesitatingly, not liking to face this intensely personal application of
his intemperate remark.

"Not I! I am just like the rest--"

"Treason! I won't hear it," said Desborough, softly. "There are no
others like you on earth."

"Just like the rest," she continued emphatically, unheeding the
interruption, which the others had hardly caught, "and I will tell you
that never again will that flag at the gaff there be the flag of
America. You have lost us for good."

"Oh, don't say that. Make a personal exception of yourself at least,
Miss Wilton, and give us room to hope a little."

"No, no," she laughed. "You have lost us all--me included."

There was a chorus of expostulation and argument immediately, but Miss
Wilton was not to be overborne.

"Father!" she called quickly to the colonel, who, followed by the
captain, at once joined the little group of officers. "These gentlemen
seem to doubt me when I say their sometime colonies are gone for good.
Won't you help me to state the point so they will understand it?"

"Gentlemen," said the old colonel, slowly and impressively, "the
colonies were the most loyal and devoted portion of the king's dominion
at one time. I have been up and down the length and breadth of them, I
know the feeling. I was for years a soldier of the king myself,--with
your fathers, young sirs,--and I can bear witness that no part of the
kingdom responded with such alacrity to every legitimate demand upon it
by the home government. Never did men so readily and willingly offer
themselves and their goods for the service of the king. But it is all
changed now. The change came slowly, but it came inevitably and
surely, and you could no more change the present conditions than you
could turn back the sun in its course. England has lost her colonies--"

"Her late colonies," corrected Katharine, softly.

"Yes, yes, of course, her late colonies, that is, beyond possibility of
recovery. We will not be taxed without representation."

"But suppose that we gave you the representation for which you asked,
colonel. How then? Would not there be a general return to allegiance
in that event?" quer