Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:OLD ESTHER DUDLEY By Nathaniel Hawthorne The Province House in Boston was the home of the Royal Governors of Massachusetts. This is the story of how the stately, spectre- haunted old Housekeeper, even after the departure of the last Royal Governor and the triumph of the Colonies, remained "faith- ful unto death" to her Sovereign Lord King George. 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 h;mself, 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 clinched hand on his brow, and cursed the destiny thathad flung the shame of a dismembered empire upon him. Reprinted from "Twke Told Tales," by permission of the Houghton Miffliu Company. "Would to God," cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage, " that the rebels were even now at the doorstep! A bloodstain 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...