“’Twas yere bonny face I seed first, Miss Dolly,” he cried, the tears coursing down the scars of his cheeks.  “An’ syne I kennt weel the young master was here.  Noo God be praised for this blythe day, that Mr. Richard’s cam to his ain at last!”

But Scipio and Chess could only blubber as they helped him to lift me out, Dolly begging them to be careful.  As they carried me up the familiar path to the pillared porch, the first I asked Ivie was of Patty, and next why he had left Gordon’s.  She was safe and well, despite the Tories, and herself had sent him to take charge of Carvel Hall as soon as ever Judge Bordley had brought her the news of its restoration to me.  He had supplied her with another overseer.  Thanks to the good judge and to Colonel Lloyd, who had looked to my interests since Grafton was fled, Ivie had found the old place in good order, all the negroes quiet, and impatient with joy against my arrival.

It is time, my children, to bring this story to a close.  I would I might write of those delicious spring days I spent with Dorothy at Carvel Hall, waited on by the old servants of my grandfather.  At our whim my chair would be moved from one to another of the childhood haunts; on cool days we sat in the sun by the dial, where the flowers mingled their odours with the salt breezes off the Chesapeake; or anon, when it was warmer, in the summer-house my mother loved, or under the shade of the great trees on the lawn, looking out over the river.  And once my lady went off very mysteriously, her eyes brimful of mischief, to come back with the first strawberries of the year staining her apron.

We were married on the fifteenth of June, already an anniversary for us both, in the long drawing-room.  General Clapsaddle was there from the army to take Dorothy in his arms, even as he had embraced another bride on the same spot in years gone by.  She wore the wedding gown that was her mother’s, but when the hour was come to dress her Aunt Lucy and Aunt Hester failed in their task, and it was Patty who performed the most of that office, and hung the necklace of pearls about her neck.

Dear Patty!  She hath often been with us since.  You have heard your mothers and fathers speak of Aunt Patty, my dears, and they will tell you how she spoiled them when they went a-visiting to Gordon’s Pride.

Ere I had regained my health, the war for Independence was won.  I pray God that time may soften the bitterness it caused, and heal the breach in that noble race whose motto is Freedom.  That the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack may one day float together to cleanse this world of tyranny!

AFTERWORD

The author makes most humble apologies to any who have, or think they have, an ancestor in this book.  He has drawn the foregoing with a very free hand, and in the Maryland scenes has made use of names rather than of actual personages.  His purpose, however poorly accomplished, was to give some semblance of reality to this part of the story.  Hence he has introduced those names in the setting, choosing them entirely at random from the many prominent families of the colony.