Katharine poured a little more of the cordial down his throat, which gave him a fictitious strength for a moment, and he answered in a little stronger voice, with a glance of recognition and wonder,—
"The colonel and the young miss! we thought you dead in the wreck of the Radnor. He will be glad;" and then after a pause recollection came to him. "Oh, God!" he murmured, "Mr. Seymour!"
"What of him? Speak!" cried Katharine, in agony.
"Gone with the rest," he replied with an effort "'T was a good fight, though. The other ships,—where are they?"
"Escaped," answered the colonel; "we are too much cut up to pursue."
"Why did you do it?" moaned Katharine, thinking of Seymour's attack on the ship of the line.
The old man did not heed the question; his eyes closed. He was still a moment, and then he opened his eyes again slowly. Straight above him waved the standard of his enemy.
"I never thought—to die—under the English flag," he said slowly and with great effort. Supplying its place with her own young soft arm, Katharine drew forth the little American ensign which had served him for a pillow—stained with his own blood—and held it up before him. A light came into his dying eyes,—a light of heaven, perhaps, no pain in his heart now. One trembling hand would still do his bidding; by a superhuman effort of his resolute will he caught the bit of bunting and carried it to his lips in a long kiss of farewell. His lips moved. He was saying something. Katharine bent to listen. What was it? Ah! she heard; they were the words he said on the deck of the transport when they saw the ship wrecked in the pass in the beating seas,—the words he had repeated in the old farmhouse on that winter night to the great general, when he told the story of that cruise; the words he had made to stand for the great idea of his own life; the words with which he had cheered and soothed and sustained and encouraged many weaker men who had looked to his iron soul for help and guidance. They were the words to which many a patriot like him, now lying mute and cold upon the hills about Boston, under the trees at Long Island, by the flowing waters and frowning cliffs of the Hudson, on the verdant glacis at Quebec, 'neath the smooth surface of Lake Champlain, in the dim northern woods, on the historic field of Princeton, or within the still depths of this mighty sea now tossing them upon its bosom, had given most eloquent expression and final attestation. What were they?
"For—for—love—of—country." The once mighty voice died away in a feeble whisper; a child might still the faintly beating heart. The mighty chest—rose—fell; the old man lay still. Love of country,—that was his passion, you understand.
Love of country! That was the great refrain. The wind roared the song through the pines, on the snow-clad mountains in the far north, sobbed it softly through the rustling palmetto branches in the south-land, or breathed it in whispers over the leaves of the oak and elm and laurel, between. The waves crashed it in tremendous chorus on rock-bound shores, or rolled it with tender caress over shining sands. Under its inspiration, mighty men left all and marched forth to battle; wooed by its subtle music, hero women bore the long hours of absence and suspense; and in its tender harmonies the little children were rocked to sleep. Ay, love of country! All the voices of man and nature in a continent caught it up and breathed it forth, hurled it in mighty diapason far up into God's heaven. Love of country! It was indeed a mighty truth. They preached it, loved it, lived for it, died for it, till at last it made them free!