About a year after Rosny's departure, Morton chanced to be again in New York, when, in going out one morning, he beheld all the symptoms of some impending solemnity. Flags, festooned with crape, were strung across Broadway from building to building. The shops were half closed, and the streets were fast filling with people. Patriot citizens, exchanging the yardstick for the sword, strode the sidewalk in gorgeous panoply; and now and then a mounted warrior cantered along the pavement, struggling to keep his balance on his fiery coach horse. In an hour or two more, the pageant was in full operation. Looking from his hotel window Morton beheld a radiant river of shining bayonets, many colored plumes, and martial millinery, solemnly flowing down the middle of Broadway, to strange and lugubrious music, between melancholy shores of black broadcloth and beaver hats. At length a train of hearses appeared slowly advancing to the wailing music of the bands, encircled by the harmless sabres of the civic warriors, playing soldier, around the remains of those who had borne the part in tragic earnest. Over every hearse the national flag was drooping, and upon each was inscribed the name of its unconscious tenant. They were officers slain in battle during the last Mexican campaign. Four of the hearses passed. Morton read the names. They were all unknown to him; but as the fifth approached, he looked, started, and looked again; for wrought in white upon the sable drapery he saw, distinct and clear, the name of Rosny. Descending to the street, he joined the procession; he even underwent the funeral oration at the City Hall; and when it was over, shouldering through the crowd, he stood by the side of all that remained of his old classmate. Rosny's cap, and the sword he had used so well, lay on the lid of the coffin; and Morton turned away, with eyes not quite dry, as he recalled his many genial traits and his undaunted spirit.
To resume. On returning to his hotel after taking leave of Rosny, Morton found a note awaiting him, directed in a female hand. He opened it, and read the signature,—Ellen Ashland,—the name of a lady whom he had well known in Boston, and who, just before he had sailed for Europe, had been married to an eminent lawyer of his acquaintance. She wrote that she had seen an account of his escape from prison, and arrival in New York, in the morning paper,—expressed an earnest wish to see him, and invited him to visit her at the New York Hotel, where she was spending a few days with her husband.
As the time named was almost come, Morton called a coach, and drove up town. His friend received him with a peculiar warmth and earnestness of manner. Morton had known her as a person of marked character and strong but strictly governed emotions, not always permitting the expression of a feeling to keep pace with the feeling itself. He greatly liked and esteemed her, and her presence disarmed him, in a great degree, of his usual reserve.
Her husband had been absent all day in Brooklyn, and would not return till late in the evening.
"It is five years since I have spoken to a lady," said Morton, as he seated himself at the tea table.
As he was not scrupulous to wear a mask before her, she quickly discovered the depressed condition of his mind; and on her charging him with being very much out of spirits, he admitted that he was so.
"One would think," she observed, "that after the sufferings that you have passed, you would have come home in a different mood of mind."
"And so I did," said Morton.
"You seem in no great haste to see your friends and relations in Boston."
"I have no near relations there."