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 conies 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 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 recognized 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 trod 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 heartbroken 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 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.”