reader with any notions of fine-flavoured Havana cigars; pipes, with Virginia cut, being the materials employed in the indulgence. A little excellent Cogniac and water, in which, however, the spring was not as much neglected as in the orgies related in the previous chapter, moistened their lips from time to time, giving a certain zest and comfort to their enjoyments. Just as the door opened to admit the major, he was the subject of discourse, the proud parent and the partial friend finding almost an equal gratification in discussing his fine, manly appearance, good qualities, and future hopes. His presence was untimely then, in one sense, though he was welcome and indeed expected. The captain pushed a chair to his son, and invited him to take a seat near the table, which held a spare pipe or two, a box of tobacco, a decanter of excellent brandy, a pitcher of pure water, all pleasant companions to the elderly gentlemen then in possession.

"I suppose you are too much of a maccaroni, Bob, to smoke," observed the smiling father. "I detested a pipe at your time of life, or may say, I was afraid of it; the only smoke that was in fashion among our scarlet coats being the smoke of gunpowder. Well, how comes on Gage, and your neighbours the Yankees?"

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Why, sir," answered the major, looking behind him, to make sure that the door was shut-"Why, sir, to own the truth, my visit here, just at this moment, is connected with the present state of that quarrel."

Both the captain and the chaplain drew the pipes from their mouths, holding them suspended in surprise and attention.

"The deuce it is!" exclaimed the former. "I thought I owed this unexpected pleasure to your affectionate desire to let me know I had inherited the empty honours of a baronetcy!"

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That was one motive, sir, but the least. I beg you to remember the awkwardness of my position, as a king's officer, in the midst of enemies."

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The devil! I say, parson, this exceeds heresy and schism! Do you call lodging in your father's house, Major Willoughby, being in the midst of enemies? This is rebellion against nature, and is worse than rebellion against the king."

"My dear father, no one feels more secure with you than I do; or, even with Mr. Woods, here. But there are others besides you two in this part of the world, and your very settlement may not be safe a week longer! probably would not be, if my presence in it were known."

Both the listeners now fairly laid down their pipes, and the smoke began gradually to dissipate, as it might have been rising from a field of battle. One looked at the other in wonder, and then both looked at the major in curiosity.

"What is the meaning of all this, my son?" asked the captain, gravely. "Has anything new occurred to complicate the old causes of quarrel ?”

"Blood has at length been drawn, sir; open rebellion has commenced!" But do you

"This is a serious matter, indeed, if it be really so.

not exaggerate the consequences of some fresh indiscretion of the soldiery, in firing on the people? Remember, in the other affair, even the colonial authorities justified the officers."

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This is a very different matter, sir. Blood has not been drawn in a riot, but in a battle.'

"Battle! You amaze me, sir! That is indeed a serious matter, and may lead to most serious consequences!"

"The Lord preserve us from evil times," ejaculated the chaplain, "and lead us, poor dependent creatures that we are, into the paths of peace and quietness! Without his grace, we are the blind leading the blind."

"Do you mean, Major Willoughby, that armed and disciplined bodies have met in actual conflict?"

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Perhaps not literally so, my dear father; but the minute-men of Massachusetts and His Majesty's forces have met and fought. This I know full well; for my own regiment was in the field, and, I hope it is unnecessary to add, that its second officer was not absent." "Of course these minute-men-rabble would be the better word -could not stand before you?" said the captain, compressing his lips, under a strong impulse of military pride.

Major Willoughby coloured, and, to own the truth, at that moment he wished the Rev. Mr. Woods, if not literally at the devil, at least safe and sound in another room; anywhere, so it were out of ear-shot of the answer.

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"Why, sir," he said, hesitating, not to say stammering, notwithStanding a prodigious effort to seem philosophical and calm-"To Own the truth, these minute-fellows are not quite as contemptible as we soldiers would be apt to think. It was a stone-wall affair, and dodging work; and so, you know, sir, drilled troops wouldn't have the usual chance. They pressed us pretty warmly on the retreat."

"Retreat! Major Willoughby!"

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I called it retreat, sure enough; but it was only a march in again, after having done the business on which we went out. I shall admit, I say, sir, that we were hard pressed until reinforced."

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Reinforced, my dear Bob! Your regiment, our regiment, could not need a reinforcement against all the Yankees in New England."

The major could not abstain from laughing a little at this exhi bition of his father's esprit de corps; but native frankness and love of truth, compelled him to admit the contrary.

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It did, sir, notwithstanding," he answered; and, not to mince the matter, it needed it confoundedly. Some of our officers, who have seen the hardest service of the last war, declare that, taking the march, and the popping work, and the distance altogether, it was the warmest day they remember. Our loss, too, was by no means insignificant, as I hope you will believe, when you know the troops engaged. We report something like three hundred casualties."

The captain did not answer for quite a minute. All this time he sat thoughtful, and even pale; for his mind was teeming with the pregnant consequences of such an outbreak. Then he desired his

son to give a succinct, but connected history of the whole affair. The major complied, beginning his narrative with an account of the general state of the country, and concluding it by giving, as far as it was possible for one whose professional pride and political feelings were too deeply involved to be entirely impartial, a reasonably just account of the particular occurrence already mentioned.

The events that led to, and the hot skirmish which it is the practice of the country to call the Battle of Lexington, and the incidents of the day itself, are too familiar to the ordinary reader to require repetition here. The major explained all the military points very clearly, did full justice to the perseverance and daring of the provincials, as he called his enemies-for, an American himself, he would not term them Americans-and threw in as many explanatory remarks as he could think of, by way of vindicating the "march in, again." This he did, too, quite as much out of filial piety, as out of self-love; for, to own the truth, the captain's mortification, as a soldier, was so very evident as to give his son sensible pain.

"The effect of all this," continued the major, when his narrative of the military movements was ended, "has been to raise a tremendous feeling, throughout the country, and God knows what is to follow.'

"And this you have come hither to tell me, Robert," said the father, kindly. "It is well done, and as I would have expected from you. We might have passed the summer here, and not have heard a whisper of so important an event."

"Soon after the affair-or, as soon as we got some notion of its effect on the provinces, General Gage sent me, privately, with despatches to Governor Tryon. He, Governor Tryon, was aware of your position; and, as I had also to communicate the death of Sir Harry Willoughby, he directed me to come up the river, privately, have an interview with Sir John, if possible, and then push on, under a feigned name, and communicate with you. He thinks, now Sir William is dead, that with your estate, and new rank, and local influence, you might be very serviceable in sustaining the royal cause; for, it is not to be concealed that this affair is likely to take the character of an open and wide-spread revolt against the authority of the Crown.'

"General Tryon does me too much honour," answered the captain, coldly. "My estate is a small body of wild land; my influence extends little beyond this beaver meadow, and is confined to my own household, and some fifteen or twenty labourers; and as for the new rank of which you speak, it is not likely the colonists will care much for that, if they disregard the rights of the king. Still, you have acted like a son in running the risk you do, Bob; and I pray God you may get back to your regiment in safety."

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This is a cordial to my hopes, sir; for nothing would pain me more than to believe you think it my duty, because I was born in the colonies, to throw up my commission, and take side with the rebels."

"I do not conceive that to be your duty, any more than I conceive it to be mine to take sides against them, because I happened

to be born in England. It is a weak view of moral obligations, that confines them merely to the accidents of birth and birthplace. Such a subsequent state of things may have grown up, as to change all our duties, and it is necessary that we discharge them as they are; not as they may have been, hitherto, or may be, hereafter. Those who clamour so much about mere birthplace, usually have no very clear sense of their higher obligations. Over our birth we can have no control; while we are rigidly responsible for the fulfilment of obligations voluntarily contracted."

"Do you reason thus, captain?" asked the chaplain, with strong interest. "Now, I confess, I feel, in this matter, not only very much like a native American, but very much like a native Yankee, in the bargain. You know I was born in the Bay, and-the major must excuse me-but, it ill-becomes my cloth to deceive--I hope the major will pardon me-I-I do hope

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Speak out, Mr. Woods," said Robert Willoughby, smiling"You have nothing to fear from your old friend the major."

"So I thought-so I thought-well, then, I was glad—yes, really rejoiced at heart, to hear that my countrymen, down-east, there, had made the king's troops scamper."

"I am not aware that I used any such terms, sir, in connexion with the manner in which we marched in, after the duty we went out on was performed," returned the young soldier, a little stiffly. "I suppose it is natural for one Yankee to sympathize with another; but my father, Mr. Woods, is an Old-England, and not a NewEngland-man; and he may be excused if he feel more for the servants of the Crown."

Certainly, my dear major certainly, my dear Mr. Robert-my old pupil, and, I hope, my friend-all this is true enough, and very natural. I allow Captain Willoughby to wish the best for the king's troops, while I wish the best for my own countrymen.'

"This is natural, on both sides, out of all question, though it by no means follows that it is right. 'Our country, right or wrong,' is a high-sounding maxim, but it is scarcely the honest man's maxim. Our country, after all, cannot have nearer claims upon us, than our parents for instance; and who can claim a moral right to sustain even his own father, in error, injustice, or crime? No, no-I hate your pithy sayings; they commonly mean nothing that is substantially good. at bottom."

"But one's country, in a time of actual war, sir!" said the major, in a tone of as much remonstrance as habit would allow him to use to his own father.

Quite true, Bob; but the difficulty here, is to know which is one's country. It is a family quarrel, at the best, and it will hardly do to talk about foreigners at all. It is the same as if I should treat Maud unkindly, or harshly, because she is the child of only a friend, and not my own natural daughter. As God is my judge, Woods, I am unconscious of not loving Maud Meredith, at this moment, as tenderly as I love Beulah Willoughby. There was a period in her childhood, when the playful little witch had most of my heart, I am afraid, if the truth were known. It is use, and duty, then, and not mere birth, that ought to tie our hearts.'

"

The major thought it might very well be that one child should be loved more than another, though he did not understand how there could be a divided allegiance. The chaplain looked at the subject with views still more narrowed, and he took up the cudgels of argument in sober earnest, conceiving this to be as good an opportunity as another for disposing of the matter.

"I am all for birth, and blood, and natural ties," he said, "always excepting the peculiar claims of Miss Maud, whose case is sui generis, and not to be confounded with any other case. A man can have but one country, any more than he can have but one nature; and, as he is forced to be true to that nature, so ought he morally to be true to that country. The captain says, that it is difficult to determine which is one's country, in a civil war; but I cannot admit the argument. If Massachusetts and England get to blows, Massachusetts is my country; if Suffolk and Worcester counties get into a quarrel, my duty calls me to Worcester, where I was born; and so I should carry out the principle from country to country, county to county, town to town, parish to parish; or, even household to household."

"This is an extraordinary view of one's duty, indeed, my dear Mr. Woods," cried the major, with a good deal of animation; "and if one-half the household quarrelled with the other, you would take sides with that in which you happened to find yourself, at the moment."

"It is an extraordinary view of one's duty for a parson;" observed the captain. "Let us reason backward a little, and ascertain where we shall come out. You put the head of the household out of the question. Has he no claims? Is a father to be altogether overlooked in the struggle between the children? Are his laws to be broken-his rights invaded-or his person to be maltreated, perhaps, and his curse disregarded, because a set of unruly children get by the ears, on points connected with their own selfishness?"

"I give up the household," cried the chaplain, "for the Bible settles that; and what the Bible disposes of, is beyond dispute― Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee'-are terrible words, and must not be disobeyed. But the decalogue has not another syllable which touches the question. Thou shalt not kill,' means murder only; common, vulgar murder-and thou shalt not steal,' 'thou shalt not commit adultery,' &c., don't bear on civil war, as I see. 'Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy'-'Thou shalt not covet the ox nor the ass'-'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.' None of these, not one of them, bears at all on this question."

"What do you think of the words of the Saviour, where he tells us to render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's?' Has Cæsar no rights here? Can Massachusetts and my Lord North settle their quarrels in such a manner as to put Cæsar altogether out of view?"

The chaplain looked down a moment, pondered a little, and then he came up to the attack again with renewed ardour.