e'en bear with you yet a little while. Come, let us pass."

"Nay, dame," said the old soldier, "I care but little for your abuse;
but duty is duty, and so an' ye give me not the shibboleth, as old
Noll's canters would say, you may e'en tramp back. You see, I've got
some of your slang, and will fight the devil with his own fire: 'And
there fell of the children of Ephraim, at the passage of the Jordan--'"

"Hush, blasphemer!" said Sarah, impatiently. "But if you must have the
pass before you can admit us, take it." And she leaned forward and
whispered in his ear the words, "Be faithful to the cause."

"Right as a trivet," said Berkenhead, "and so pass on. A fig for the
consequences, so that my skirts are clear."

Relieved from this embarrassment, Sarah Drummond and her trembling
companion passed through the gate, and proceeded up the long gravelled
walk which led to the state-house. They had not gone far before Virginia
Temple descried a dark form approaching them, and even before she could
recognize the features, her heart told her it was Hansford. In another
moment she was in his arms.

"My own Virginia, my loved one," he cried, regardless of the presence of
Mrs. Drummond, "I scarcely dared hope that you would have kept your
promise to say farewell. Come, dearest, lean on my arm, I have much to
tell you. You, my kind dame, remain here for a few moments--we will not
detain you long."

Quietly yielding to his request, Virginia took her lover's arm, and they
walked silently along the path, leaving the good dame Drummond to digest
alone her crude notions about the prospects of Israel.

"Is it not singular," said Hansford at length, "that before you came, I
thought the brief hour we must spend together was far too short to say
half that I wish, and now I can say nothing. The quiet feeling of love,
of pure and tranquil love, banishes every other thought from my heart."

"I fear--I fear," murmured Virginia, "that I have done very wrong in
consenting to this interview."

"And why, Virginia," said her lover, "even the malefactor is permitted
the poor privilege of bidding farewell forever to those around him--and
am I worse than he?"

"No, Hansford, no," replied Virginia, "but to come thus with a perfect
stranger, at night, and without my father's permission, to an interview
with one who has met with his disapprobation--"

"True love," replied Hansford, sadly, "overleaps all such feeble
barriers as these--where the ha