And then Nolan added, almost in a whisper, “Oh, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your age!”
Years passed on, and Nolan’s sentence was unrevoked, though his friends had more than once asked for a pardon.
The end came when he had been upwards of fifty years at sea, and he asked the ship’s doctor for a visit from Captain Danforth, whom he liked. Danforth tells us about Nolan’s last hours and calls him “dear old Nolan,” so we know his love was returned.
The officer saw what a little shrine poor Nolan had made of his stateroom. Up above were the stars and stripes, and around a portrait of Washington he had painted a majestic eagle, with lightnings blazing from his beak and his foot just clasping the whole globe, which the wings overshadowed. Nolan said, with a sad smile, “Here, you see, I have a country!” Over the foot of the bed was a great map of the United States, drawn from memory, which he had there to look upon as he lay in his berth. Quaint old names were on it, in large letters: Indiana Territory, Mississippi Territory, and Louisiana Territory.
“Danforth,” he said, “I know I am dying. I cannot get home. Surely you will tell me something now? Stop! Stop! Do not speak till I say what I am sure you know, that there is not in this ship, that there is not in America—God bless her!—a more loyal man than I. There cannot be a man who loves the old flag or prays for it as I do. There are thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I thank God for that, though I do not know what their names are. There has never been one taken away. I thank God for that. But tell me something—tell me everything, Danforth, before I die!”
Captain Danforth, in writing about it afterwards says: “I felt like a monster that I had not told him everything before. Though obeying orders, who was I that I should have been acting the tyrant all this time over this dear, sainted old man, who had expiated, in his whole manhood’s life, the madness of a boy’s treason.”
“Mr. Nolan,” he said, “I will tell you everything you ask about.”
Then he told him the names of all the new states, and drew them in on the map. He told him of the inventions—the steamboats, the railroads and telegraphs; he tried to tell him all that had happened to the great and growing country in fifty years. He told him about Abraham Lincoln, who was then President—except that he could not wound his friend by mentioning a word about the cruel Civil War which was then raging.
Nolan drank it in and enjoyed it more than we can tell. After that he seemed to grow weary and said he would go to sleep. He bent Danforth down and kissed him, and then said, “Look in my Bible, Captain, when I am gone.”
Danforth went away with no thought that this was the end. But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found Nolan had breathed away his life with a smile.