It was with a sinking heart that Seymour rode up the hill toward Fairview Hall a few days later. There had been a light fall of snow during the preceding night, and the brilliant sun of the early morning had not yet gained sufficient strength to melt it away. There was a softening touch therefore about the familiar scene, and Seymour, who had never viewed it in the glory of its summer, thought he had never known it to look so beautiful. Heartily greeted as he passed on by the various servants of the family, with whom he was a great favorite, he finally drew rein and dismounted before the great flight of steps which led up to the terrace upon which the house stood. His arrival had not been unnoticed, and Madam Talbot was standing in the doorway to greet him. He noticed that she looked paler and thinner and older, but she held herself as erect and carried herself as proudly as she had always done. Grief and disappointment and broken hope might change and destroy the natural tissues and fibres of her being, but they could not alter her iron will. Tossing the bridle to one of the attendant servants, Seymour, hat in hand, walked slowly up the steps and across the grass plat, and stepped upon the porch. She watched him in silence, with a frightful sinking of the heart; the gravity of his demeanor and the pallor of his face, in which she seemed to detect a shade of pity which her pride resented, apprised her that whatever news he had brought would be ill for her to hear, but her rigid face and composed manner gave no indication of the deadly conflict within. Seymour bowed low to her, and she returned his salute with a sweeping courtesy, old-fashioned and graceful.

"Lieutenant Seymour is very welcome to Fairview Hall, though I trust it be not the compelling necessity of a wound which makes him seek our hospitality again," she said, faintly smiling.

"Oh, madam," said Seymour, softly, yet in utter desperation as to how to begin, "unfortunately it is not to be cured of wounds, but to inflict them that this time I am come. I—I am sorry—that I have to tell you that—I—" he continued with great hesitation.

"You are a bearer of ill tidings, I perceive," she continued gravely. "Speak your message, sir. Whatever it may be, I trust the God I serve to give me strength to bear it. Is it—is it—Hilary?" she went on, with just a suggestion of a break in her even, carefully modulated tones.

"Yes, dear madam. He—he—"

"Stop! I had almost forgotten my duty. Tell me first of the armies of my king. The king first of all with our house, you know."

Poor Seymour! he must overwhelm her with bad news in every field of her affection. For a moment he almost wished the results had been the other way. The perspiration stood out upon his forehead in spite of the coldness, and he felt he would rather charge a battery than face this terrible old woman who put the armies of a king—and such a king too—before the fate of her only son! And yet he knew that what he had to tell her would break down even her iron will, and reaching the mother's heart beating warm within her in spite of her assumed coldness and self-repression, would probably give her a death-blow. He felt literally like a murderer before her, but he had to answer. Talbot's own letter, General Washington's command, and the promptings of his own affection had made him an actor in this pathetic drama. He had no choice but to proceed. The truth must be told. Nerving himself to the inevitable, he replied to her question,—

"The armies of the king have been defeated and forced to retire. General Washington has outmanoeuvred and outfought them; they are now shut up in New York again. The Jerseys are free, and we have taken upward of two thousand prisoners, and many are killed and wounded among them,—on both sides, in truth," he added.

"The worst news first," she replied. "One knows not why these things are so. It seems the God of Justice slumbers when subjects rebel against their rightful kings! But I have faith, sir. The right will win in the end—must win."

"So be it," he said, accepting the implied challenge, but adding nothing further. He would wait to be questioned now, and this strange woman should have the story in the way that pleased her best. As for her she could not trust herself to speak. Never before had her trembling body, her beating heart escaped from the domination of her resolute will. Never before had her mobile lips refused to formulate the commands of her active brain. She fought her battle out in silence, and finally turned toward him once more.

"There was something else you said, I think. My—my son?" Her voice sank to a whisper; in spite of herself one hand went to her heart. Ah, mother, mother, this was indeed thy king! "Is—is he wounded?—My God, sir! Not dead?"

His open hand which he had extended to her h............