was expressed in my face.

"Well," said he, "I have got you the appointment without much
difficulty. There are many ways in which you can be useful to the party
when not helping me with my affairs."

This conversation gave me food for reflection during a week. I was
troubled about Mr. Swain, and what he had said as to not living kept
running in my head as I wrote or figured. For I had enough to hold me
busy.

In the meantime, the clouds fast gathering on both sides of the Atlantic
grew blacker, and blacker still. I saw a great change in Annapolis. Men
of affairs went about with grave faces, while gay and sober alike were
touched by the spell. The Tory gentry, to be sure, rattled about in
their gilded mahogany coaches, in spite of jeers and sour looks. My Aunt
Caroline wore jewelled stomachers to the assemblies,--now become dry and
shrivelled entertainments. She kept her hairdresser, had three men in
livery to her chair, and a little negro in Turk's costume to wait on
her. I often met her in the streets, and took a fierce joy in staring
her, in the eye. And Grafton! By a sort of fate I was continually
running against him. He was a very busy man, was my uncle, and had a
kind of dignified run, which he used between Marlboro' Street and the
Council Chamber in the Stadt House, or the Governor's mansion. He
never did me the honour to glance at me. The Rev. Mr. Allen, too, came
a-visiting from Frederick, where he had grown stout as an alderman upon
the living and its perquisites and Grafton's additional bounty. The
gossips were busy with his doings, for he had his travelling-coach and
servant now. He went to the Tory balls with my aunt. Once I all but
encountered him on the Circle, but he ran into Northeast Street to avoid
me.

Yes, that was the winter when the wise foresaw the inevitable, and the
first sharp split occurred between men who had been brothers. The old
order of things had plainly passed, and I was truly thankful that my
grandfather had not lived to witness those scenes. The greater part of
our gentry stood firm for America's rights, and they had behind them the
best lawyers in America. After the lawyers came the small planters
and most of the mechanics. The shopkeepers formed the backbone of King
George's adherents; the Tory gentry, the clergy, and those holding
office under the proprietor made the rest.

And it was all about tea, a word which, since '67, had been steadily
becoming the most vexed in the lan