“Your suggestion, mother, shall not pass from me unheeded, nor shall I fail, in due time, to act upon it; but, at present, I know not if the last tie that binds me to this place should be severed—I know not but our down-trodden country may have the first claim on my services. Ever since the startling news of the massacre of Lexington reached us, a sense of the duty of devoting myself to her defence has pressed heavily and constantly on my mind. And but for the stronger claim which nature and my own feelings have given you, in your situation, to my presence and attention, I might, before this, have been with my shouldered musket on my way to the scene of action. But even in the event of your death, I should hesitate to obey the call if I knew I must do it without your sanction.”
“I thank you, my son, for your affectionate deference; but you shall not go without my sanction. Having conjectured what might be your feelings at this dark hour of our country's peril, I was about to speak to you on the subject. Yes, Harry, if you think duty calls you to the field, in defence of a cause so just and righteous as ours, go. You will be under the care of the same Providence there as elsewhere. Go, and with a dying mother's blessing, and a prayer of faith for your safety and success, do battle manfully for the Heaven-favored side, till the oppressor be cast down, and the oppressed go free.”
With a heart swelling with conflicting emotions, the young man looked up to reply, when his words were arrested on his lips, by the evident change that the countenance of the other had suddenly undergone. The unnatural animation, which she had exhibited during the conversation, had faded away. She lay listless and exhausted, with her eyes nearly closed, and her lips slightly moving in secret prayer.
“And now, Lord, what wait I for?” she at length audibly uttered. “But I am not to wait,” she continued, in a firmer tone after a short pause. “The final moment is at hand! Farewell earth! farewell, my son! May Heaven's blessings rest on you—on all, and be the offences of all forgiven. Ah! the light of day is fading; but O, that brighter light which opens those angel forms, with smiling faces, which beckon me away! Ready! I come!—I come!”
And thus,—
“—blessing and blest,
In death she went smiling away
To the heavenly bosom of rest.”
CHAPTER XII.
“Whene'er your case can be no worse,
The desperate is the wiser course.”