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Our host having resumed the chair, he, as well as
Mr. Tiffany and myself, expressed much eagerness
to be made acquainted with the story to which the
loyalist had alluded. That venerable man first of
all saw fit to moisten his throat with another glass of
wine, and then, turning his face towards our coal fire,
looked steadfastly for a few moments into the depths
of its cheerful glow. Finally, he poured forth a great
fluency of speech. The generous liquid that he had
imbibed, while it warmed his age-chilled blood, likewise
took off the chill from his heart and mind, and
gave him an energy to think and feel, which we
could hardly have expected to find beneath the snows
of fourscore winters. His feelings, indeed, appeared
to me more excitable than those of a younger man;
or, at least, the same degree of feeling manifested
itself by more visible effects, than if his judgment
and will had possessed the potency of meridian life.

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

At the pathetic passages of his narrative, he readily
melted into tears. When a breath of indignation
swept across his spirit, the blood flushed his withered
visage even to the roots of his white hair; and he
shook his clenched fist at the trio of peaceful auditors,
seeming to fancy enemies in those who felt very
kindly towards the desolate old soul. But ever and
anon, sometimes in the midst of his most earnest talk,
this ancient person's intellect would wander vaguely,
losing its hold of the matter in hand, and groping for
it amid misty shadows. Then would he cackle forth
a feeble laugh, and express a doubt whether his wits—
for by that phrase it pleased our ancient friend to
signify his mental powers—were not getting a little
the worse for wear.

Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist's story
required more revision to render it fit for the public
eye, than those of the series which have preceded it;
nor should it be concealed, that the sentiment and
tone of the affair may have undergone some slight, or
perchance more than slight metamorphosis, in its
transmission to the reader through the medium of a
thorough-going democrat. The tale itself is a mere
sketch, with no involution of plot, nor any great interest
of events, yet possessing, if I have rehearsed it
aright, that pensive influence over the mind, which
the shadow of the old Province House flings upon the
loiterer in its court-yard.

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The hour had come—the hour of defeat and humiliation—
when Sir William Howe was to pass over
the threshold of the Province House, and embark, with
no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised
himself, on board the British fleet. He bade his servants
and military attendants go before him, and lingered
a moment in the loneliness of the mansion, to
quell the fierce emotions that struggled in his bosom
as with a death-throb. Preferable, then, would he
have deemed his fate, had a warrior's death left him a
claim to the narrow territory of a grave, within the
soil which the King had given him to defend. With
an ominous perception that, as his departing footsteps
echoed adown the staircase, the sway of Britain was
passing forever from New England, he smote his
clenched hand on his brow, and cursed the destiny
that had flung the shame of a dismembered empire
upon him.

`Would to God,' cried he, hardly repressing his
tears of rage, `that the rebels were even now at the
door-step! A blood-stain upon the floor should then
bear testimony that the last British ruler was faithful
to his trust.'

The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his
exclamation.

`Heaven's cause and the King's are one,' it said.
`Go forth, Sir William Howe, and trust in Heaven to
bring back a Royal Governor in triumph.'

Subduing at once the passion to which he had
yielded only in the faith that it was unwitnessed, Sir

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

William Howe became conscious that an aged woman,
leaning on a gold-headed staff, was standing betwixt
him and the door. It was old Esther Dudley, who
had dwelt almost immemorial years in this mansion,
until her presence seemed as inseparable from it as
the recollections of its history. She was the daughter
of an ancient and once eminent family, which had
fallen into poverty and decay, and left its last descendant
no resource save the bounty of the King,
nor any shelter except within the walls of the Province
House. An office in the household, with merely
nominal duties, had been assigned to her as a pretext
for the payment of a small pension, the greater
part of which she expended in adorning herself with
an antique magnificence of attire. The claims of
Esther Dudley's gentle blood were acknowledged by
all the successive Governors; and they treated her
with the punctilious courtesy which it was her foible
to demand, not always with success, from a neglectful
world. The only actual share which she assumed in
the business of the mansion, was to glide through its
passages and public chambers, late at night, to see
that the servants had dropped no fire from their flaring
torches, nor left embers crackling and blazing on
the hearths. Perhaps it was this invariable custom of
walking her rounds in the hush of midnight, that
caused the superstition of the times to invest the old
woman with attributes of awe and mystery; fabling
that she had entered the portal of the Province House,
none knew whence, in the train of the first Royal

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

Governor, and that it was her fate to dwell there till
the last should have departed. But Sir William Howe,
if ever heard this legend, had forgotten it.

`Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering here?'
asked he, with some severity of tone. `It is my
pleasure to be the last in this mansion of the King.'

`Not so, if it please your Excellency,' answered
the time-stricken woman. `This roof has sheltered
me long. I will not pass from it until they bear me
to the tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter is
there for old Esther Dudley, save the Province House
or the grave?'

`Now Heaven forgive me!' said Sir William Howe
to himself. `I was about to leave this wretched old
creature to starve or beg. Take this, good Mistress
Dudley,' he added, putting a purse into her hands.
'King George's head on these golden guineas is
sterling yet, and will continue so, I warrant you, even
should the rebels crown John Hancock their king.
That purse will buy a better shelter than the Province
House can now afford.'

`While the burthen of life remains upon me, I will
have no other shelter than this roof,' persisted Esther
Dudley, striking her staff upon the floor, with a gesture
that expressed immovable resolve. `And when
your Excellency returns in triumph, I will totter
into the porch to welcome you.'

`My poor old friend!' answered the British General,—
and all his manly and martial pride could no
longer restrain a gush of bitter tears. `This is an evil
hour for you and me. The province which the King

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

entrusted to my charge is lost. I go hence in misfortune—
perchance in disgrace—to return no more.
And you, whose present being is incorporated with the
past—who have seen Governor after Governor, in
stately pageantry, ascend these steps—whose whole
life has been an observance of majestic ceremonies,
and a worship of the King—how will you endure
the change? Come with us! Bid farewell to a land
that has shaken off its allegiance, and live still under
a Royal government, at Halifax.'

`Never, never!' said the pertinacious old dame.
`Here will I abide; and King George shall still have
one true subject in his disloyal province.'

`Beshrew the old fool!' muttered Sir William
Howe, growing impatient of her obstinacy, and
ashamed of the emotion into which he had been betrayed.
`She is the very moral of old-fashioned
prejudice, and could exist nowhere but in this musty
edifice. Well, then, Mistress Dudley, since you will
needs tarry, I give the Province House in charge to
you. Take this key, and keep it safe until myself, or
some other Royal Governor, shall demand it of you.'

Smiling bitterly at himself and her, he took the
heavy key of the Province House, and delivering it
into the old lady's hands, drew his cloak around him
for departure. As the General glanced back at Esther
Dudley's antique figure, he deemed her well-fitted
for such a charge, as being so perfect a representative
of the decayed past—of an age gone by,
with its manners, opinions, faith, and feelings, all
fallen into oblivion or scorn—of what had once

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

been a reality, but was now merely a vision of faded
magnificence. Then Sir William Howe strode forth,
smiting his clenched hands together, in the fierce anguish
of his spirit; and old Esther Dudley was left
to keep watch in the lonely Province House, dwelling
there with memory:—and if Hope ever seemed to
flit around her, still it was Memory in disguise.

The total change of affairs that ensued on the departure
of the British troops did not drive the venerable
lady from her strong-hold. There was not, for
many years afterwards, a Governor of Massachusetts;
and the magistrates, who had charge of such matters,
saw no objection to Esther Dudley's residence in the
Province House, especially as they must otherwise
have paid a hireling for taking care of the premises,
which with her was a labor of love. And so they
left her the undisturbed mistress of the old historic
edifice. Many and strange were the fables which the
gossips whispered about her, in all the chimney-corners
of the town. Among the time-worn articles of
furniture that had been left in the mansion, there was
a tall, antique mirror, which was well worthy of a
tale by itself, and perhaps may hereafter be the theme
of one. The gold of its heavily-wrought frame was
tarnished, and its surface so blurred, that the old
woman's figure, whenever she paused before it,
looked indistinct and ghostlike. But it was the general
belief that Esther could cause the Governors of the
overthrown dynasty, with the beautiful ladies who had
once adorned their festivals, the Indian chiefs who
had come up to the Province House to hold council or

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

swear allegiance, the grim Provincial warriors, the
severe clergymen—in short, all the pageantry of
gone days—all the figures that ever swept across the
broad plate of glass in former times—she could
cause the whole to reappear, and people the inner
world of the mirror with shadows of old life. Such
legends as these, together with the singularity of her
isolated existence, her age, and the infirmity that
each added winter flung upon her, made Mistress
Dudley the object both of fear and pity; and it was
partly the result of either sentiment, that, amid all the
angry license of the times, neither wrong nor insult
ever fell upon her unprotected head. Indeed, there
was so much haughtiness in her demeanor towards
intruders, among whom she reckoned all persons acting
under the new authorities, that it was really an
affair of no small nerve to look her in the face. And
to do the people justice, stern republicans as they had
now become, they were well content that the old gentlewoman,
in her hoop-petticoat and faded embroidery,
should still haunt the palace of ruined pride and overthrown
power, the symbol of a departed system, embodying
a history in her person. So Esther Dudley
dwelt, year after year, in the Province House, still
reverencing all that others had flung aside, still faithful
to her King, who, so long as the venerable dame
yet held her post, might be said to retain one true
subject in New England, and one spot of the empire
that had been wrested from him.

And did she dwell there in utter loneliness? Rumor
said, not so. Whenever her chill and withered

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

heart desired warmth, she was wont to summon a
black slave of Governor Shirley's from the blurred
mirror, and send him in search of guests who had
long ago been familiar in those deserted chambers.
Forth went the sable messenger, with the starlight or
the moonshine gleaming through him, and did his
errand in the burial-grounds, knocking at the iron
doors of tombs, or upon the marble slabs that covered
them, and whispering to those within: `My mistress,
old Esther Dudley, bids you to the Province House
at midnight.' And punctually as the clock of the
Old South told twelve, came the shadows of the
Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the Dudleys, all the grandees
of a bygone generation, gliding beneath the portal
into the well-known mansion, where Esther mingled
with them as if she likewise were a shade.
Without vouching for the truth of such traditions, it is
certain that Mistress Dudley sometimes assembled a
few of the stanch, though crest-fallen old tories,
who had lingered in the rebel town during those days
of wrath and tribulation. Out of a cobwebbed bottle,
containing liquor that a Royal Governor might have
smacked his lips over, they quaffed healths to the
King, and babbled treason to the Republic, feeling as
if the protecting shadow of the throne were still flung
around them. But, draining the last drops of their
liquor, they stole timorously homeward, and answered
not again, if the rude mob reviled them in the
street.

Yet Esther Dudley's most frequent and favored
guests were the children of the town. Towards them

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she was never stern. A kindly and loving nature,
hindered elsewhere from its free course by a thousand
rocky prejudices, lavished itself upon these little
ones. By bribes of gingerbread of her own making,
stamped with a royal crown, she tempted their sunny
sportiveness beneath the gloomy portal of the Province
House, and would often beguile them to spend a
whole play-day there, sitting in a circle round the
verge of her hoop-petticoat, greedily attentive to her
stories of a dead world. And when these little boys
and girls stole forth again from the dark mysterious
mansion, they went bewildered, full of old feelings
that graver people had long ago forgotten, rubbing
their eyes at the world around them as if they had
gone astray into ancient times, and become children
of the past. At home, when their parents asked
where they had loitered such a weary while, and
with whom they had been at play, the children would
talk of all the departed worthies of the Province, as
far back as Governor Belcher, and the haughty dame
of Sir William Phips. It would seem as though they
had been sitting on the knees of these famous personages,
whom the grave had hidden for half a century,
and had toyed with the embroidery of their
rich waistcoats, or roguishly pulled the long curls of
their flowing wigs `But Governor Belcher has been
dead this many a year,' would the mother say to her
little boy. `And did you really see him at the Province
House?' `Oh, yes, dear mother! yes!' the
half dreaming child would answer. `But when old
Esther had done speaking about him he faded away

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out of his chair.' Thus, without affrighting her little
guests, she led them by the hand into the chambers
of her own desolate heart, and made childhood's fancy
discern the ghosts that haunted there.

Living so continually in her own circle of ideas,
and never regulating her mind by a proper reference
to present things, Esther Dudley appears to have
grown partially crazed. It was found that she had
no right sense of the progress and true state of the
Revolutionary war, but held a constant faith that the
armies of Britain were victorious on every field, and
destined to be ultimately triumphant. Whenever the
town rejoiced for a battle won by Washington, or
Gates, or Morgan, or Greene, the news, in passing
through the door of the Province House, as through
the ivory gate of dreams, became metamorphosed into
a strange tale of the prowess of Howe, Clinton, or
Cornwallis. Sooner or later; it was her invincible
belief, the colonies would be prostrate at the footstool
of the King. Sometimes she seemed to take for
granted that such was already the case. On one occasion,
she startled the town's people by a brilliant
illumination of the Province House, with candles at
every pane of glass, and a transparency of the King's
initials and a crown of light, in the great balcony
window. The figure of the aged woman, in the most
gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and brocades, was
seen passing from casement to casement, until she
paused before the balcony, and flourished a huge key
above her head. Her wrinkled visage actually gleamed
with triumph, as if the soul within her were a festal
lamp.

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

`What means this blaze of light? What does old
Esther's joy portend?' whispered a spectator. `It
is frightful to see her gliding about the chambers,
and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her company.
'

`It is as if she were making merry in a tomb,'
said another.

`Pshaw! It is no such mystery,' observed an old
man, after some brief exercise of memory. `Mistress
Dudley is keeping jubilee for the King of England's
birth-day.'

Then the people laughed aloud, and would have
thrown mud against the blazing transparency of the
King's crown and initials, only that they pitied the
poor old dame, who was so dismally triumphant amid
the wreck and ruin of the system to which she appertained.

Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary
staircase that wound upward to the cupola, and thence
strain her dimmed eyesight seaward and countryward,
watching for a British fleet, or for the march of a
grand procession, with the King's banner floating over
it. The passengers in the street below would discern
her anxious visage, and send up a shout—`When
the golden Indian on the Province House shall shoot
his arrow, and when the cock on the Old South spire
shall crow, then look for a Royal Governor again!'—
for this had grown a by-word through the town.
And at last, after long, long years, old Esther Dudley
knew, or perchance she only dreamed, that a Royal
Governor was on the eve of returning to the Province

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

House, to receive the heavy key which Sir William
Howe had committed to her charge. Now it was the
fact, that intelligence bearing some faint analogy to
Esther's version of it, was current among the town's
people. She set the mansion in the best order that
her means allowed, and arraying herself in silks and
tarnished gold, stood long before the blurred mirror to
admire her own magnificence. As she gazed, the
gray and withered lady moved her ashen lips, murmuring
half aloud, talking to shapes that she saw
within the mirror, to shadows of her own fantasies,
to the household friends of memory, and bidding them
rejoice with her, and come forth to meet the Governor.
And while absorbed in this communion, Mistress Dudley
heard the tramp of many footsteps in the street,
and looking out at the window, beheld what she construed
as the Royal Governor's arrival.

`Oh, happy day! oh, blessed, blessed hour!' she
exclaimed. `Let me but bid him welcome within the
portal, and my task in the Province House, and on
earth, is done!'

Then with tottering feet, which age and tremulous
joy caused to tread amiss, she hurried down the grand
staircase, her silks sweeping and rustling as she went,
so that the sound was as if a train of spectral courtiers
were thronging from the dim mirror. And Esther
Dudley fancied, that as soon as the wide door
should be flung open, all the pomp and splendor of
by-gone times would pace majestically into the Province
House, and the gilded tapestry of the past
would be brightened by the sunshine of the present.

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She turned the key—withdrew it from the lock—
unclosed the door—and stept across the threshold.
Advancing up the court-yard, appeared a person of
most dignified mien, with tokens, as Esther interpreted
them, of gentle blood, high rank, and long accustomed
authority, even in his walk and every gesture.
He was richly dressed, but wore a gouty shoe, which,
however, did not lessen the stateliness of his gait.
Around and behind him were people in plain civic
dresses, and two or three war-worn veterans, evidently
officers of rank, arrayed in a uniform of blue and
buff. But Esther Dudley, firm in the belief that had
fastened its roots about her heart, beheld only the
principal personage, and never doubted that this was
the long-looked-for Governor, to whom she was to
surrender up her charge. As he approached, she
involuntarily sank down on her knees, and tremblingly
held forth the heavy key.

`Receive my trust! take it quickly!' cried she;
`for methinks Death is striving to snatch away my
triumph. But he comes too late. Thank Heaven
for this blessed hour! God save King George!'

`That, Madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up
at such a moment,' replied the unknown guest of the
Province House, and courteously removing his hat, he
offered his arm to raise the aged woman. `Yet, in
reverence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith,
Heaven forbid that any here should say you nay.
Over the realms which still acknowledge his sceptre,
God save King George!'

Esther Dudley started to her feet, and hastily

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

clutching back the key, gazed with fearful earnestness
at the stranger; and dimly and doubtfully, as if
suddenly awakened from a dream, her bewildered
eyes half recognised his face. Years ago, she had
known him among the gentry of the province. But
the ban of the King had fallen upon him! How,
then, came the doomed victim here? Proscribed, excluded
from mercy, the monarch's most dreaded and
hated foe, this New England merchant had stood triumphantly
against a kingdom's strength; and his foot
now trode upon humbled Royalty, as he ascended
the steps of the Province House, the people's chosen
Governor of Massachusetts.

`Wretch, wretch that I am!' muttered the old
woman, with such a heart-broken expression, that the
tears gushed from the stranger's eyes. `Have I
bidden a traitor welcome! Come, Death! come
quickly!'

`Alas, venerable lady!' said Governor Hancock,
lending her his support with all the reverence that a
courtier would have shown to a queen. `Your life
has been prolonged until the world has changed
around you. You have treasured up all that time
has rendered worthless—the principles, feelings,
manners, modes of being and acting, which another
generation has flung aside—and you are a symbol of
the past. And I, and these around me—we represent
a new race of men—living no longer in the
past, scarcely in the present—but projecting our
lives forward into the future. Ceasing to model ourselves
on ancestral superstitions, it is our faith and

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

principle to press onward, onward! Yet,' continued
he, turning to his attendants, `let us reverence, for
the last time, the stately and gorgeous prejudices of
the tottering Past!'

While the Republican Governor spoke, he had continued
to support the helpless form of Esther Dudley;
her weight grew heavier against his arm; but
at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient
woman sank down beside one of the pillars 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 mantelpiece 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,

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

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 that the clock was
still striking in a by-gone century. Neither of us
would have wondered, had a hoop-petticoated phantom
of Esther Dudley tottered into the chamber,
walking her rounds in the hush of midnight, as of
yore, and motioned us to quench the fading embers
of the fire, and leave the historic precincts to herself
and her kindred shades. But as no such vision was
vouchsafed, I retired unbidden, and would advise Mr.
Tiffany to lay hold of another auditor, being resolved
not to show my face in the Province House for a good
while hence—if ever.