'What more, Duncan?' I said. 'Go on.'
'Did you see that tall, fine-looking young Englishman—the governor's secretary—who took the long walk through the meadows and by the river with Caroline in the evening?'
'Well?' I said.
'Well, you heard the governor make a prediction about this country; I am going to make a prediction about that young man and Caroline. They'll be married!' He came near and laid his hand on my arm. 'Do you know,' he said, 'that there is only a single life,—a man of seventy-four,—between that young man and a dukedom?'
I laughed heartily. Soon I was calling at the top of my voice, 'Caroline! Caroline!'
*****
In the late fall of the same year I was sitting one evening, with my mother and sisters, around an open fire. The elections were over—the report from the farthest parish had come in.
A great happiness sat on my mother's face. 'To think,' she said, 'that you were really elected, Roger, and at the head of the poll too.' I did not answer. Something about the room and the way we were seated had suggested to me another occasion, another evening, when, the day after the fight at Lexington, over eight years ago, in deep sorrow, we had gathered in the library of our former home at Cambridge, to make plans for the future. But I recalled my thoughts.
'Yes, mother,' I said, 'there is no doubt of it. I have been elected. Things have not turned out so badly for us after all. Indeed, I do not know a single one of our acquaintances who is not happier than before the war. Doctor Canfield's new church is quite magnificent, Duncan Hale's school is fast becoming a college; as for the farmers about, well—I don't think there is much danger of any of them wanting to go back to be buried "without benefit of clergy." What is it David Elton says? Oh, yes—"I wouldn't go back if they'd make me president." Poor David, the way he did storm and rage the day they put him in the mine with me. True, they were hard days those for both of us.'
'But the mine led to the parliament,' my mother said, smiling.