ime, Jamie, all unconscious of his patrons' anxiety, went on,
from spring to fall and fall to spring, working without hope of her,
to make his honor good to men. If there was one day in the year that
could be said to bring him near enjoyment, it was that day when, his
yearly salary saved, he went to New York to buy doubloons. One might
almost say he enjoyed this. He enjoyed the night voyage upon the
Sound; the waking in the noisy city by busy ships that had come,
perhaps, from New Orleans or Havana; the crowded streets, with crowds
of which she had once been one, crowds so great that it seemed they
must include her still. The broker of whom he bought his gold would
always ask to see him, and offer him a glass of wine, which, taken by
Jamie with a trembling hand, would bring an unwonted glow to his
wrinkled cheeks as he hastened away grasping tight his canvas bag of
coin. The miser!

Can you make a story of such a life? It had its interest for the
recording angel. But it was two years more to the next event we men
must notice.

May the twenty-seventh, eighteen fifty-four. Old Jamie (old he had
been called for thirty years, and now was old indeed) had finished his
work rather early and locked up the books. All day there had been
noise and tramping of soldiers and murmurs of the people out on the
street before the door, but Jamie had not noticed it. Old Mr. Bowdoin
had rushed in and out, red in the face as a cherry, sputtering
irascibility, but Jamie had not known it. And now he had come from
counting his coin, a pleasure to him, so nearly the old chest lay as
full as it had been that day a quarter century before. He had been
gloating over it with a candle in the dark vault; but a few rows more,
and his work was done, and he might go--to die, or find Mercedes.

As he came out into the street, blinking in the sudden sunlight, he
found it crowded close with quiet people. So thick they stood, he
could not press his way along the sidewalk. It was not a mob, for
there was no shouting or disorder; yet, intermittently, there rose a
great murmur, such as the waves make or the leaves, the muttering of a
multitude. Jamie turned his face homeward, and edged along by the
wall, where there was most room. And now the mutter rose and swelled,
and above it he heard the noise of fife and drum and the tread of
soldiers.

He came to the first cross-street, and found it cleared and patrolled
by cavalry militia. The man on a horse in fron