stood there--the house--before and after the
Revolution. It had been turned into a small garrison more than once. Its
walls had heard anxious councils, as men of strong nerve and resolute
will made their vows of independence. Stately dames and grand gentlemen,
in powder and ball dress, in ruffles and periwigs, had paced its weird
corridors, or danced the slow minuet in its great salon.

But now all was changed, and Mistress Marjory--as the neighbors called
her--lived alone in the old manor, the last of all her kin. She was a
tall, pale woman, bearing in her stately, gracious ways all the trace of
her proud ancestry, living alone, yet living for others, helping the
poor and the suffering, answering the call of sorrow everywhere it
reached her, loving and beloved. And her story--The story I learned one
day in the great drawing-room at Vincent Manor! Ah, well, after all,
perhaps it will not interest you as much as it did me. All lives have
their sorrows; does the telling of _one_ matter, after all?

But perhaps the charm and the pathos lay in the way Mistress Marjory
told it, sitting in the shadows before the open wood fire, with her
hands, so seldom idle, folded listlessly in her lap, and her beautiful
gray eyes looking far into the past. What a pretty picture she was in
her black silk dress, with its lace kerchief crossed on her bosom, with
her hair, white as snow, drawn back high from her brow! I like to think
of her as she looked that night so long ago.

And so it is that I think you may like the story best if I tell it to
you in her own words, just as she told it to me. So here it is:--

"My child-life was one full of excitement, yet little pleasure. What
with our struggles between hostile Indians and the soldiers of King
George, we had small time for play or serenity of living. Yet perhaps we
children enjoyed our play hours more than do those of the present time,
for they were so few and far between,--those peaceful, happy days,--they
were treasured all the more. Of the many strange events that happened in
those far-off years I have no time to tell you now. My parents had seven
children--there were six boys. I was the only daughter, and next to the
youngest, who was my favorite brother, one year my junior, sunny,
brave-hearted, and loyal in all things.

"While the men were at work in the fields, and women busy in the house,
the children on different homesteads kept watch for Indians. My
brothers, of course, took