"Can you not tell me?" she said in the same strangely quiet voice. "If, after all, God does not let the right perish,—if America should win in the conflict, after you have thrown yourself upon British clemency, where will you be then?"
"Then?" spoke one hesitating voice. "Why, then, if it ever could be, we should be ruined. We must leave the country forever. But it is absurd to think of such a thing. The struggle is an utterly hopeless one. We have no men, no money, no arms, no food and England has everything."
"No," said Mrs. Arnett; "you have forgotten one thing which England has not and which we have—one thing which outweighs all England's treasures, and that is the Right. God is on our side, and every volley from our muskets is an echo of His voice. We are poor and weak and few; but God is fighting for us. We entered into this struggle with pure hearts and prayerful lips. We had counted the cost and were willing to pay the price, were it our heart's blood. And now—now, because for a time the day is going against us, you would give up all and sneak back, like cravens, to kiss the feet that have trampled upon us! And you call yourselves men—the sons of those who gave up home and fortune and fatherland to make for themselves and for dear liberty a resting-place in the wilderness? Oh, shame upon you, cowards!"
Her words had rushed out in a fiery flood, which her husband had vainly striven to check. I do not know how Mrs. Arnett looked, but I fancy her a little fair woman, with kindly blue eyes and delicate features,—a tender and loving little soul, whose scornful, blazing words must have seemed to her amazed hearers like the inspired fury of a pythoness. Are we not all prophets at times—prophets of good or evil, according to our bent, and with more power than we ourselves suspect to work out the fulfillment of our own prophecies? Who shall say how far this fragile woman aided to stay the wave of desolation which was spreading over the land?
"Gentlemen," said good Mr. Arnett uneasily, "I beg you to excuse this most unseemly interruption to our council. My wife is beside herself I think. You all know her and know that it is not her wont to meddle with politics, or to brawl and bluster. To-morrow she will see her folly, but now I pray your patience."
Already her words had begun to stir the slumbering manhood in the bosoms of those who heard her. Enthusiasm makes its own fitting times. No one replied; each felt too keenly his own pettiness, in the light cast upon them by this woman's brave words.
"Take your protection, if you will," she went on, after waiting in vain for a reply. "Proclaim yourselves traitors and cowards, false to your country and your God, but horrible will be the judgment you will bring upon your heads and the heads of those that love you. I tell you that England will never conquer. I know it and feel it in every fibre of my heart. Has God led us so far to desert us now? Will He, who led our fathers across the stormy winter sea, forsake their children who have put their trust in Him? For me, I stay with my country, and my hand shall never touch the hand, nor my heart cleave to the heart of him who shames her."
She flashed upon her husband a gaze which dazzled him like sudden lightning.
"Isaac, we have lived together for twenty years, and for all of them I have been a true and loving wife to you. But I am the child of God and of my country, and if you do this shameful thing, I will never again own you for my husband."
"My dear wife!" cried the husband aghast, "you do not know what you are saying. Leave me, for such a thing as this?"