"Oh, you know, Miss Wilton, if the colonies—" began one of the officers, vehemently.

"Pardon me, Mr. Hollins, that is hardly the correct term. The late colonies would be better," interrupted Katharine, with much spirit.

"Oh, well, you know, I am merely anticipating, of course; we 'll have them back fast enough, after while. Now, if they—"

"Pardon me again, sir, but that is another contention I can hardly admit. You 'll never have them back,—never, never!"

"Oh, come, Miss Wilton," said another, "you surely do not think the colonies—oh, well, the late colonies, if you will insist upon it—can maintain a fight with the power of Great Britain, for any length of time! Why, madam, the English spirit—"

"Well, sir, what else have we but the English spirit? What other blood runs in our veins, pray? Just as you love and prize your liberty, so too do we, and we will not be dominated and ruled over, even by our brothers. No, no, Mr. Beauchamp, or you, either, Mr. Hollins; it is no use. We are just as determined as you are; and there is but one way to win back the colonies, as you call them, to their allegiance."

"And how is that, pray?"

"Why, by depopulating them, overwhelming them, killing the people, and wasting the land. Only a war of extermination will serve your purpose."

"Well," said Hollins, doggedly, "if they must have it, they must—let it be extermination! The authority of the king and the power of Parliament must be upheld at all hazards."

"Ah, that is easy enough to say," replied Katharine, "but three millions of English-speaking liberty-loving people are not to be blotted out by a wave of the hand; they are not so easily exterminated, as you will find. Besides, it is easy to speak in general terms; but thousands and thousands are young and helpless, or old and feeble,—grandsires or women or children,—how about them? As long as there is a woman left or a child, your task is yet unfulfilled. Make a personal application of it; I am one of them. Do you wish to exterminate me, sir?" she said, looking up at him brilliantly, with her glorious brown eyes.

"Oh, you—you are different, of course," said the lieutenant, hesitatingly, not liking to face this intensely personal application of his intemperate remark.

"Not I! I am just like the rest—"

"Treason! I won't hear it," said Desborough, softly. "There are no others like you on earth."

"Just like the rest," she continued emphatically, unheeding the interruption, which the others had hardly caught, "and I will tell you that never again will that flag at the gaff there be the flag of America. You have lost us for good."

"Oh, don't say that. Make a personal exception of yourself at least,
Miss Wilton, and give us room to hope a little."

"No, no," she laughed. "You have lost us all—me included."

There was a chorus of expostulation and argument immediately, but Miss
Wilton was not to be overborne.

"Father!" she called quickly to the colonel, who, followed by the captain, at once joined the little group of officers. "These gentlemen seem to doubt me when I say their sometime colonies are gone for good. Won't you help me to state the point so they will understand it?"

"Gentlemen," said the old colonel, slowly and impressively, "the colonies were the most loyal and devoted portion of the king's dominion at one time. I have been up and down the length and breadth of them, I know the feeling. I was for years a soldier of the king myself,—with your fathers, young sirs,—and I can bear witness that no part of the kingdom responded with such alacrity to every legitimate demand upon it by the home government. Never did men so readily and willingly offer themselves and their goods for the service of the king. But it is all changed now. The change came slowly, but it came inevitably and surely, and you could no more change the present conditions than you could turn back the sun in its course. England has lost her colonies—"

"Her late colonies," corrected Katharine, softly.

"Yes, yes, of course, her late colonies, that is, beyond possibility of recovery. We will not be taxed without representation."

"But suppose that we gave you the representation for which you asked, colonel. How then? Would not there be a general return to allegiance in that event?" queried the captain.

"Sir," replied the colonel, proudly, "the child who has once learned to walk alone does not afterward go back to creeping and crawling, or stumbling along by the aid of his mother's hand. We have tasted our independence, enjoyed it, and now we mean to keep it."

"Splendid, sir! splendid, father!" cried the delighted Katharine.
"There speaks the spirit of Runnymede, and Naseby, too, gentlemen!"

"Hush, hush, my child!" chided the colonel, half amusedly; "it is only the spirit of a plain man who has learned to love liberty by studying the history of his ancestry and his people."

"Ah, but, colonel, how are you going to get that liberty without fighting for it?" asked Beauchamp, with rash temerity. "Howe and Cornwallis, for instance, have been pursuing Washington for six months, and could never get near enough to fire a shot at him, so they say."

"Fight, sir, fight!" exclaimed the colonel, in astonished wrath; "why, God bless me, sir, I am willing to stand out now and show you how they can fight!"

But Miss Katharine sprang to her feet: "And Bunker Hill, Mr. Beauchamp, and Long Island!" she cried impetuously.

Beauchamp backed away precipitately from before her in great confusion, which invoked much mocking comment from the laughing officers round about him.

"Here is one time the English forces are routed by a rebel!" said
Hollins.

"Yes," added Desborough, "but then Beauchamp is no worse off than the rest of us would be, if Miss Wilton were opposed to us."

"Well," continued another, coming to the rescue, "we won both of those engagements, you know, Miss Wilton, after all."

"Won! Who said anything about winning, sir? Anybody can win, if they have men enough or strength enough and money enough—we were talking about fighting, sir."

"But really, you know," went on Beauchamp, recovering, and returning to the charge, "Washington's army haven't fought since those days you speak of, and they must be wiped out of existence by now, I should suppose."

"Not if George Washington is still alive," interrupted th............