This is not a history, my dears, as I have said.  And time is growing short.  I shall pass over that dreary summer of ’74.  It required no very keen eye to see the breakers ahead, and Mr. Bordley’s advice to provide against seven years of famine did not go unheeded.  War was the last thing we desired.  We should have been satisfied with so little, we colonies!  And would have voted the duties ten times over had our rights been respected.  Should any of you doubt this, you have but to read the “Address to the King” of our Congress, then sitting in Philadelphia.  The quarrel was so petty, and so easy of mending, that you of this generation may wonder why it was allowed to run.  I have tried to tell you that the head of a stubborn, selfish, and wilful monarch blocked the way to reconciliation.  King George the Third is alone to blame for that hatred of race against race which already hath done so much evil.  And I pray God that a great historian may arise whose pen will reveal the truth, and reconcile at length those who are, and should be, brothers.

By October, that most beautiful month of all the year in Maryland, we were again in Annapolis:  One balmy day ’twas a Friday, I believe, and a gold and blue haze hung over the Severn—­Mr. Chase called in Gloucester Street to give the barrister news of the Congress, which he had lately left.  As he came down the stairs he paused for a word with me in the library, and remarked sadly upon Mr. Swain’s condition.  “He looks like a dying man, Richard,” said he, “and we can ill afford to lose him.”

Even as we sat talking in subdued tones, the noise of a distant commotion arose.  We had scarce started to our feet, Mr. Chase and I, when the brass knocker resounded, and Mr. Hammond was let in.  His wig was awry, and his face was flushed.

“I thought to find you here,” he said to Mr. Chase.  “The Anne Arundel Committee is to meet at once, and we desire to have you with us.”  Perceiving our blank faces, he added:  “The ‘Peggy Stewart’ is in this morning with over a ton of tea aboard, consigned to the Williams’s.”

The two jumped into a chaise, and I followed afoot, stopped at every corner by some excited acquaintance; so that I had the whole story, and more, ere I reached Church Street.  The way was blocked before the committee rooms, and ’twas said that the merchants, Messrs. Williams, and Captain Jackson of the brig, were within, pleading their cause.

Presently the news leaked abroad that Mr. Anthony Stewart, the brig’s owner, had himself paid the duty on the detested plant.  Some hundreds of people were elbowing each other in the street, for the most part quiet and anxious, until Mr. Hammond appeared and whispered to a man at the door.  In all my life before I had never heard the hum of an angry crowd.  The sound had something ominous in it, like the first meanings of a wind that is to break off great trees at their trunks.  Then some one shouted:  “To Hanover Street!  To