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 governor, and that it was her fate to dwell there till the last should have departed.

But Sir William Howe, if he 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 burden of life remains upon me I will have no other shelter than this roof,” persisted Esther Dudley, striking her stuff 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 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.”