Her two little girls were about to be thrown upon the charity of strangers, and as no one could foresee the issue of the expedition, in which their beloved father was engaged, she could not but fancy them orphans in a foreign land, far from every relative, and exposed to the thousand mischances that lie in wait for unprotected infancy.  These distressing reflections would also seem to have been heightened by the consideration that it was very uncertain whether the king’s troops would be able to maintain their position at New York.  Anticipating the confusion of a retreat, and the hurry of an embarkation increased by the approach of danger, must she not have shuddered at the fate of these two little innocents destitute of every claim to protection but that of helplessness.

And then too, she was about to die in a foreign land! to mingle her ashes with a soil neither kindred to her heart, nor consoling in its associations.  No gentle hand smoothed her dying pillow; no well known voice responded to her last sighs.  What a moment for such a young and interesting woman.  What agonies may we not imagine to have been her’s?  Her career of life, of rank, of honour, closing with circumstances so little befitting their proud claims.  What horrors would we not naturally attribute to that hour of accumulating anguish, to that child, to that mother, to that wife?  What wretchedness to that fatal moment which was about to sever their purest, freshest, sweetest ties? Quite otherwise.  This admirable young woman, died with serenity and resignation.  Religion shed its light upon her heart, and faith “that daughter of the skies,” renewed her sinking spirit with life and hope.  She fearlessly committed her infants to their father in heaven, and in the full assurance of a triumph over death and the grave, she gently yielded up her spirit to him who gave it.

Colonel Archibald Hamilton, who then resided at Flushing, and appears to have been a distinguished personage, connected with the Lothian family, immediately carried the children to his own home, where they remained until the return of their father, tenderly taken care of and cherished.

The feelings of that father upon his return are not for me to describe.  Those agonies which affection may feel, but which are too sacred thoughtlessly to be portrayed, were on this occasion deep and withering.  That cheek which toil and exposure had not yet blanched, was now pale with care and furrowed by grief.

I never learned what became of the children; whether they returned to their “ain countrie,” to grow up to womanhood within the halls of Thirlstane, “the glass of fashion and the mould of form,” or early slept on the hill side of Selkirk, covered by the heath and shaded by the broom.  Perhaps at this moment they live in a green old age, the chronicles of that fated period, when the mother country by her ill-starred policy threw away one of her brightest jewels.  Individual suffering increased and rendered poignant beyond the usual lot of humanity, marked a contest which was founded upon unprovoked aggression.