CHAPTER V.

I, considering how honour would become such a person, was pleased to let him seek danger, where he was like to find fame.

SHAKSPEARE.

ANOTHER Sorrow soon overtook poor Bessie; but now she had a right to feel, and might express all she felt, and look full in the face of her friends for sympathy, for they shared the burden with her.

In the year 1778, letters were sent by General Washington to the governors of the several states, earnestly entreating them to re-inforce the army.

The urgency of this call was acknowledged by every patriotic individual; and never did heart more joyously leap than Eliot Lee's, when his mother said to him—" My son, I have long had misgivings about keeping you at home; but last night, after reading the general's letter, I could not sleep; I felt for him, for the country; my conscience told me you ought to go, Eliot; even the images of the children, for whose sake only I have thought it right you should stay with us, rose up against me: we should pay our portion for the privileges they are to enjoy. I have made up my mind to it, and on my knees I have given you to my country. The widow's son, she continued, clearing her voice, “is something more than the widow's mite, Eliot; but I have given you up, and now I have done with feelings -nothing is to be said or thought of but how we shall soonest and best get you ready."

Eliot was deeply affected by his mother's decision, voluntary and unasked; but he did not express his satisfaction, his delight, till he ascertained that she had well considered the amount of the sacrifice and was willing to meet it. Then he confessed that nothing but a controlling sense of his filial duty had enabled him to endure loitering at the fireside, when his country needed the aid he withheld.

The decision made, no time was lost. Letters were obtained from the best sources to General Washington, and in less than a week Eliot was ready for his departure.

It was a transparent morning, late in autumn, in bleak, wild, fitful, poetic November. The vault of heaven was spotless; a purple light danced over the mountain summits; the mist was condensed in the hollows of the hills, and wound round them like drapery of silver tissue.

The smokes from the village chimneys ascended through the clear atmosphere in straight columns; the trees on the mountains, banded together, still preserved a portion of their summer wealth, though now faded to dun and dull orange, marked and set off by the surrounding evergreens. Here and there a solitary elm stood bravely up against the sky, every limb, every stem defined; a naked form, showing the beautiful symmetry that had made its summer garments hang so gracefully. Fruits and flowers, even the hardy ones that venture on the frontiers of winter, had disappeared from the gardens; the seeds had dropped from their cups; the grass of the turf borders was dank and matted down; all nature was stamped with the signet seal of autumn, memory and hope. Eliot had performed the last provident offices for his mother; every thing about her cheerful dwelling had the look of

being kindly cared for. The strawberry-beds were covered, the raspberries neatly trimmed out, the earth well spaded and freshly turned; no gate was off its hinges, no fence down, no window unglazed, no crack unstopped.

A fine black saddle-horse, well equipped, was at the door. Little Fanny Lee stood by him, patting him, and laying her head, with its shining flaxen locks, to his side-" Rover," she said, with a trembling voice, "be a good Roverwon't you? and when the naughty regulars come, canter off with Eliot as fast as you can.”

"Hey! that's fine!" retorted her brother, a year younger than herself. "No, no, Rover, canter up to them, and over them, and never dare to canter back here if you turn tail on them, Rover."

"Oh, Sam! how awful; would you have Eliot killed ?"