"You mean Colonel Percy of the British army, who married Miss Sinclair, of Havre de Grace, during our last war with England, or immediately after it, I never quite understood which. There seemed some mystery about the marriage, and I did not like to inquire too closely, but I dare say now, Aunt Nancy, you can tell us all about it."
"I believe I can. See Annie, if among these packages you can find one labelled 'The Test of Love.'"
"What! another story of a proud beauty winning her glove and losing her lover?" asked Mr. Arlington.
"No; my test, or rather my hero's test, was somewhat different," I replied, as I received the package from Annie, and read,
[THE TEST OF LOVE:]
A STORY OF THE LAST WAR.
When Mr. Sinclair, the rector of St John's, in Havre de Grace took possession of his pretty parsonage, and persuaded the fair and gentle Lucy Hillman to preside over his unpretending ménage, and to share the comforts that lay within the compass of his stipend of one thousand dollars per annum, he felt that his largest earthly desires were fulfilled. A daughter was given to him, and with a grateful heart he exclaimed—"Surely Thou hast made my cup to overflow."
But he too was a man "born to trouble." He too must be initiated into those "sacred mysteries of sorrow," through which the High-priest of his profession had passed. In the succeeding ten years, three other children opened their soft, loving eyes in his home, made its air musical with their glad voices and ringing laughter, and just as he had learned to listen for the pattering of their dimpled foot, and his heart had throbbed joyously to their call, they were borne from his arms to the grave, and the echoes which they had awakened in his soul were hushed for ever. Still his Lucy and their first-born were spared, and as he drew them closer to his heart he could "lift his trusting eyes" to Him from whom his faith taught him no real evil could come to the loving spirit. The shadow of earth had fallen on his heart, but the light of heaven still beamed brightly there. Years passed with Mr. Sinclair in that deep quiet of the soul which is "the sober certainty of waking bliss." His labors were labors of love, and he was welcomed to repose by all those charms which woman's taste and woman's tenderness can bring clustering around the home of him to whom her heart is devoted. But a darker trial than any he had yet known awaited him.
War is in our borders, and that quiet town in which Mr. Sinclair's life has passed is destined to feel its heaviest curse. Its streets are filled with soldiery. The dark canopy of smoke from which now and then a lurid flame shoots upward, shows that their work is destruction, and that they will do it well. Terrified women flit hither and thither, mingling their shrieks in a wild and fiend-like concert with the crack of musketry, the falling of houses, and the loud huzzas and fierce outcries of excited men. At a distance from that quarter in which the strife commenced, stands a simple village church, within whose shadow many of those who had worshipped in its walls during the last half century, have lain down to rest from the toils of life. No proud mausoleum shuts the sunshine from those lowly graves. Drooping elms and willows bend over them, and the whispering of their long pendent branches, as the summer breeze sweeps them hither and thither, is the only sound that breaks the stillness of that hallowed air. Near the church, on the opposite side from this home of the dead, lies a garden, whose roses and honey-suckles perfume the air, while its bowers of lilac and laburnum, of myrtle and jessamine, almost shut from the view the pretty cottage to which it belongs. All around, all within that cottage, is silent. Have its inmates fled?
The neighboring houses have been long deserted, and those who left them would gladly have persuaded their pastor to accompany them; but when they called to urge his doing so, he could only point to the bed on which, already bereft of sense, and evidently fast passing from life, lay one "all lovely to the last." Mrs. Sinclair's health, delicate for years, had rapidly failed in the last few months, till her anxious husband and child, aware that a moment's acceleration of the pulse, a moment's quickening of the breath from whatever cause, might snatch her from their arms, learned to modulate every tone, to guard every look and movement in her presence. But they could not shut from her ears the boom of the cannon which heralded the approach of the foe—they could not hush the startling cries with which others met the announcement of their arrival, and the first evidences of that savage fury which desolated their homes, and left a dark stain on the escutcheon of Britain. Mrs. Sinclair uttered no cry when her terrors were thus excited, she even strove to smile upon her loved ones, to raise their drooping hearts; and in this, woman's holiest task, the springs of her life gave way—not with a sudden snap, but slowly, gently—so that for hours her husband and daughter stood watching the shadow of death steal over her, hoping yet to catch one glance of love, one whispered farewell ere she should pass for ever from them.