Joyce was as good as his word.  He became serjeant-major, and, in the end, lieutenant and adjutant of the regiment he had mentioned.  He fought in most of the principal battles of the war, and retired at the peace, with an excellent character.  Ten years later, he fell, in one of the murderous Indian affairs, that occurred during the first oresidential term, a grey-headed captain of foot.  The manner of his death was not to be regretted, perhaps, as it was what he had always wished might happen; but, it was a singular fact, that Mike stood over his body, and protected it from mutilation; the County Leitrim-man having turned soldier by trade, re-enlisting regularly, as soon as at liberty, and laying up scalps on all suitable occasions.

Blodget, too, had followed Joyce to the wars.  The readiness and intelligence of this young man, united to a courage of proof, soon brought him forward, and he actually came out of the revolution a captain.  His mind, manners and information advancing with himself, he ended his career, not many years since, a prominent politician in one of the new states; a general in the militia—­no great preferment, by the way, for one who had been a corporal at the Hut—­and a legislator.  Worse men have often acted in all these capacities among us; and it was said, with truth, at the funeral of General Blodget, an accident that does not always occur on such occasions, that “another revolutionary hero is gone.”  Beekman was never seen to smile, from the moment he first beheld the dead body of Beulah, lying with little Evert in her arms.  He served faithfully until near the close of the war, falling in battle only a few months previously to the peace.  His boy preceded him to the grave, leaving, as confiscations had gone out of fashion by that time, his uncle heir-at-law, again, to the same property that he had conferred on himself.

As for Willoughby and Maud, they were safely conveyed to New York, where the former rejoined his regiment.  Our heroine here met her great-uncle, General Meredith, the first of her own blood relations whom she had seen since infancy.  Her reception was grateful to her feelings; and, there being a resemblance in years, appearance and manners, she transferred much of that affection which she had thought interred for ever in the grave of her reputed father, to this revered relative.  He became much attached to his lovely niece, himself; and, ten years later, Willoughby found his income quite doubled, by his decease.

At the expiration of six months, the gazette that arrived from England, announced the promotion of “Sir Robert Willoughby, Bart., late major in the —–­th, to be lieutenant colonel, by purchase, in His Majesty’s —–­th regiment of foot.”  This enabled Willoughby to quit America; to which quarter of the world he had no occasion to be sent during the remainder of the war.