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. "Fear not, my child," said Mr. Sinclair, when their sad vigils were first interrupted by those who urged their flight--"they are enemies, it is true, but they are Englishmen, a peaceful clergyman, a defenceless woman, are safe in their hands--they will not harm us." "I have no fear, no thought of them, father!" said Mary Sinclair, as she turned weeping to the only object of fear, or hope, or thought, at that moment. But soon others of Mr. Sinclair's parishioners came to warn him that his confidence had been misplaced, that no character, no age, no sex, had proved a protection from the ruthless fury of their assailants. He would now have persuaded his daughter to accompany her friends to a place of safety, and when persuasions proved vain he would have commanded her, but, lifting her calm eyes to his, she said, "Father have you not taught me that, in all God's universe, the only safe place for us is that to which our duty calls us--and is not my duty here?" A colder heart would have argued with her, and might, perhaps, have proved to her that her duty was not there--that her father could watch the dying, and that it was her duty to preserve herself for him; but Mr. Sinclair folded her in his arms while his lips moved for an instant in earnest prayer, and then, turning to his waiting friends, he said, "Go, go, my friends--I thank you--but God has called us to this, and he will care for us."