of the portal. The key of the Province House fell from her grasp, and clanked against the stone.
"I have been faithful unto death," murmured she. "God save the king!"
"She hath done her office!" said Hancock solemnly. "We will follow her reverently to the tomb of her ancestors; and then, my fellow-citizens, onward,—onward! We are no longer children of the Past!"
As the old loyalist concluded his narrative, the enthusiasm
which had been fitfully flashing within his sunken eyes, and
quivering across his wrinkled visage, faded away, as if all the
lingering fire of his soul were extinguished. Just then, too, a
lamp upon the mantel-piece threw out a dying gleam, which
vanished as speedily as it shot upward, compelling our eyes to
grope for one another's features by the dim glow of the hearth.
With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying gleam,
had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the Province
House, when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its flight.
And now, again, the clock of the Old South threw its voice
of ages on the breeze, knolling the hourly knell of the Past,
crying out far and wide through the multitudinous city, and
filling our ears, as we sat in the dusky chamber, with its reverberating
depth of tone. In that same mansion,—in that very
chamber,—what a volume of history had been told off into
hours, by the same voice that was now trembling in the air.
Many a governor had heard those midnight accents, and longed
to exchange his stately cares for slumber. And as for mine
host, and Mr. Bela Tiffany, and the old loyalist, and me, we
had babbled about dreams of the past, until we almost fancied
