"Go!" she whispered again hoarsely. "Good that is too late is as good as nothing." She was smiling alone in the darkness.
Off into the night floated the murmur of convivial voices in bibulous cadence. Now the great Franklin was laughing. A watchful ear could catch the patter of faint footsteps.
Outside the room the servant still snored by the door. Sarah passed her safely and replaced the key. No one was ever the wiser for the part she and her father had played in West's life until she told it herself in later years.
Down to the river an old man and a girl stole through the darkness. Off to an unknown land it bore them to bask in the sunshine of a laurel-strewn pathway the painter Benjamin West knew through a long and fruitful life.
Recently one of his old letters to Doctor Jonathan Morris was brought to light, written four years after his marriage to Betsey Shewell, on September 2, 1765, in the church of St. Martin's in the Fields. It breathes of peace and contentment, and when that worthy read it to the Franklin household, there was one who sighed over its sentiments, and another, alas! over the spelling.
"Dear Jonathan,
"Our worthy Friend Thos Goodwin being just about to imbark on his returne to North America I could not let so favorable an opportunity Pass without returning you my thanks for your kind favor to me by Thos Carrington. By him I intended to have answered it but his leaving this place without giving me the least notice if his returne (which he rather promised he would before his departure) has been the ocasion of this omission, which I hope my dear friend will not think an neglect. As I can asshure him his letter gave me that pleasure which may be felt on the meeting of long absent friends, for such was your letter to me. It revived fresh to my memory as tho I had been in the actual enjoyment of the many Pleasing and happy hours I have spent with you in those Rural and inocent juvenal amusements with which America alone abounds my sighs are often intruding and vainely wishing again for those past pleasures which I have there so often experience in those Solitary retreats, or what they people of this side the water call the wilds of America and which is I think a true Image of the following celebrated lines—
"'O Solitude; blest state of life below—