She looked up with brave, loyal eyes, and answered, as had her ancestress, Anne Devereux, when she and her young husband were about to seek a new home in a strange, far-off land,—
"No—not so long as we be together."
Hugh Knollys fell—a Major in the Massachusetts line—during one of the closing engagements of the war, and his mother did not long survive him.
John Devereux passed through the conflict unharmed, and returned to the farm, where he and Mary lived long and happily, with their children growing up about them.
They had each summer as their guests an Englishman and his wife—a little, girl-like woman, whom every one adored—who crossed the sea to pay them long visits. Sometimes the pleasant days found this Englishman seated in the Sachem's Cave, his eyes wandering off over the sea; and with him often would be Mary Broughton's eldest son, and first-born—Jack, who had his Aunt Dorothy's curling locks and dark eyes.
The favorite story at such times, and one never tired of by either the man or child, was that telling how in the great war his mother had frightened a young English soldier so that he fell over the rocks, and how, soon after this, a certain brave little maid had hurled the burning lanterns from these same rocks, to save her brother and his companions from danger.
The youngster had first heard of all this from Johnnie Strings,—to the day of his death a crippled pensioner on the Devereux farm—who never seemed to realize that the war was over, and who had expressed marked disapproval when 'Bitha, now tall and stately, had, following her Cousin Dorothy's example, and quite regardless of her own long-ago avowals, given her heart and hand to the nephew of this same British soldier.
With this must end my story of the old town. But there is another story,—that of its fisher and sailor soldiers, and it is told in the deeds they have wrought.
These form a goodly part of the foundation upon which rests the mighty fabric of our nation. Their story is one of true, brave hearts; and it is told in a voice that will be heard until the earth itself shall have passed away.
It was the men of Marblehead who stepped forward that bitter winter's night on the banks of the Delaware, when Washington and his little army looked with dismayed eyes upon the powerful current sweeping before them, and which must be crossed, despite the great masses of ice that threatened destruction to whosoever should venture upon its roaring flood. They were the men who responded to his demand when he turned from the menacing dangers of the river and asked, "Who of you will lead on, and put us upon the other side?"