then he put Talbot's own letter to him before her, and she must be told
of the loss of the frigate. Kate dead too, and Colonel Wilton. Alas,
poor friends! But all her plans and hopes were gone; what mattered
it--what mattered anything now!

"Oh, what a load must those unrighteous men bear before God who have
inaugurated this wicked war!" she cried; but no echo of her reproach was
heard in the houses of Parliament in London, or whispered in the
antechamber of the king, to whom, assuredly, they belonged.

And by and by he left her. It wrung his heart so to do, but the call of
duty was stronger than her need. His ship was ready, or would be in a
short time, and he had snatched a few days from his pressing work to
fulfil this task. His presence was absolutely necessary on the vessel,
and he must go. Saying nay to her piteous plea that he should stay, and
most reluctantly refusing her proffers of hospitality, after leaving with
her the letters and the pictures, he left the room. But in the doorway
he looked back at her. The tears had come at last. Moved by a sudden
impulse, he ran back and knelt down by her, and took her old face between
his hands and kissed her.

"Good-by, dear madam," he whispered; "would it had been I!"

She laid her thin hands upon his head.

"Good-by," she whispered; "God bless you. Oh, my boy--my boy!" She
turned her face to the wall in bitterness, and so he fled.

On the brow of the hill one could see, if he were keen-eyed, the Wilton
place. There was the boat-house. There she had said she loved him. He
struck spurs to his horse and galloped madly away. Was there nothing but
grief and sorrow, then, under the sun?

The lawyer and the doctor and the minister were with Madam Talbot all
that day, but it was little they could do. She added a codicil to her
will with the lawyer, submissively took the medicine the doctor left her,
and listened quietly to the prayers of the priest. In the morning they
found her whiter, stiller, calmer than ever. She had gone to meet her
son in that new country where none rebel against the King!

BOOK IV

A DEATH GRAPPLE ON THE DEEP

CHAPTER XXX

_A Sailor's Opinion of the Land_

It was a delightful morning in February. The Continental ship
Randolph, a tight little thirty-two-gun frigate, the first to get to
sea of those ordered by Congress in 1775, was just leaving the
beautiful harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, by way of the