"Gentlemen," said Arnett, with an anxious look on his face. "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 it is not her wont to meddle in politics, or to bawl and bluster. Tomorrow she will see her folly, but now I pray your patience."
Her words had already begun to leaven the little manhood remaining in their bosoms, but not a word was spoken. She had turned the light of her soul upon them, and in the reflection they saw photographed their own littleness of purpose or want of manly resolve.
She still talked on: "Take your protection if you will; proclaim yourselves traitors and cowards, false to 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 now? Will He who led our fathers across the stormy, wintry 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."
While these words were falling from her lips she stood before them like a tower of strength, and, turning toward her husband, she gave him a withering look that sent a shock through every fibre of his body. Continuing, she said: "Isaac, we have lived together for twenty years, and through all of them I have been to you a true and loving wife; but I am the child of God and my country, and if you do this shameful thing I will never own you again as my husband."
"My dear wife!" answered Isaac, excitedly, "you do not know what you are saying. Leave me for such a thing as this!"
"For such a thing as this?"
"What greater cause could there be?" answered the injured wife. "I married a good man and true, a faithful friend, and it needs no divorce to sever me from a traitor and a coward. If you take your protection you lose your wife, and I—I lose my husband and my home."
The scornful words, uttered in such earnestness; the pathetic tones in which these last words were spoken; the tears that dimmed her sad blue eyes, appealed to the heart of every man before her. They were not cowards all through, but the panic sweeping over the land had caught them also.
The leaven of courage, manliness and resolution had begun its work. Before these men left the home of Hannah Arnett that night every man had resolved to spurn the offered amnesty, and had taken a solemn oath to stand by their country through good days and bad, until freedom was written over the face of this fair land.