Moved by a common impulse of commiseration, and by reverential regard akin to such as one feels when standing beside the tomb of a dear friend, the married couples and the lank bachelor bent their steps from the lawn to the rubble-strown site of the burnt mansion-house. The foundation stones indicated the size and location of the several rooms formerly occupying the ground floor. Danvers and his wife sat down upon the sandstone steps leading, in bygone days, to the wide hall door. The three little girls were at play in the paths of the ruined shrubbery; Evaleen's baby boy lay asleep on the lap of Lucrece. Arlington and Evaleen stepped across the crumbling foundation wall, and a few short paces brought them to the middle of the square area once covered by the floor of the reception room. A bunch of wild violets, in bloom, grew in the charred leaf mould at their feet. The wife plucked one of the flowers, and gave it into the hand of her constant lover. "Here is just where you stood when we met for the first time, love; do you remember? And look, Chester," she pointed upward to the empty space once enclosed in the walls of Lady Blennerhassett's bower, "right up there is the window through which we watched you go away in the moonlight." "Yes, darling; there you stood, caring very little whether or not we should ever meet again. It is exactly ten years since the day you--didn't kiss me. Do it now." "Hold on for about three shakes of a sheep's tail. Then fire away when I'm gone. I want to tell you, Chester, here is just the spot where I stood when I fit for her--" "Fought for my wife?" "No, for Harman's wife." Byle took out the handkerchief again, and Evaleen thought he intended to tell its history. "That is a fine piece of cambric. It looks like a lady's token." "This hankercher?" "Yes." Plutarch gulped down a big emotion. "It's a thumb-stall." THE END. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES 1. Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards, including multi-paragraph quotations without open double-quote marks at each break, retained as in original. 2. Added table of contents not in original edition. 3. Typographic errors corrected from original: p. 53 fragrant for fragant ("fragrant knoll") p. 75 tastefully for tastefuly ("tastefully arrayed") p. 98 huge for hugh ("huge mound") p. 182 creature for creatrue ("savage looking creature") 4. Page 317: invalid date ("November 31, 1806") retained. End of Project Gutenberg's A Dream of Empire, by William Henry Venable