“Jehosophat—­Moses and Aaron’s rod, my boy! do you see her?” gasped Sukey.

“Yes.”

“Ain’t she pretty?”

“Hush! she may hear you.”

“Well, if she’d get mad at that, she is different from most girls.”

“Her father might not think it much of a compliment.”

The coachman, closing the door of the carriage mounted his box and took the reins, while the pretty girl took her father’s arm and came down the street passing the young men, who, we fear, stared at her rudely.  They were hardly to be blamed for it, for she was as near perfection as a girl of sixteen can be.  Tall, willowy form, with deep blue eyes, soft as a gazelle’s, long, silken lashes and arched eyebrows, with golden hair, and so graceful that every movement might be set to music.

Fernando gazed after her until she disappeared into a fashionable shop, and then, uttering a sigh, started as if from a dream.

“What do you say now, old fellow?” asked Sukey.

“Let us go home.”

“Home?”

“Well, back to the widow Mahone’s inn.”

“All right; now let us try to find the trail.”

It was no easy matter, although they had the street and number well fixed in their mind.  Finally they asked a watchman (policemen were called watchmen in those days) and he conducted them to the abode of Mrs. Mahone.

The first person to greet them was Terrence.  There was a bright smile on his jolly face as he cried: 

“It’s right plazed I am to see ye lookin’ so cheerful, boys; and it’s a good time ye be having roaming the streets and looking at the beauty of Baltimore.  Much of it you’ll find, to be sure.  To-morrow we’ll go to the academy, pay our entrance fee and begin business.”

[ILLUSTRATION:  AS NEAR PERFECTION AS A GIRL OF SIXTEEN CAN BE.]

“Terrence,” said Fernando in a half whisper, “Can’t we find a more comfortable place than this to live in?”

“Oh, be aisy, me frind, for it’s an illegant a house I’ve got for all of us, and we’ll be as comfortable there as a banshee.”

Not knowing what a “banshee” was, Fernando, of course, could draw no conclusion from the comparison.  When the three young men had entered their room, Terrence began to tell them of a beautiful “craythur” he had that day seen in town, and on inquiry learned she lived a few miles away on the coast.  She was the daughter of an old sea captain and came almost daily to the city.

“What is her name?” asked Fernando.

“Lane.”

“Great Jehosiphat, Fernando!  Lane was on that carriage we saw,” cried Sukey, starting suddenly from a couch on which he had been reclining.

CHAPTER VI.

WAR FEELING OF 1811.

Mr. James Madison seems to have been one of the many great Americans capable of changing his political views without losing public favor.  Mr. Madison, as a delegate to the constitutional convention held at Philadelphia in May, 1787, was beyond question a Federalist.  Of the convention, a writer of the highest authority says: