"Oh, come, Miss Wilton," said another, "you surely do not think the colonies--oh, well, the late colonies, if you will insist upon it--can maintain a fight with the power of Great Britain, for any length of time! Why, madam, the English spirit--" "Well, sir, what else have we but the English spirit? What other blood runs in our veins, pray? Just as you love and prize your liberty, so too do we, and we will not be dominated and ruled over, even by our brothers. No, no, Mr. Beauchamp, or you, either, Mr. Hollins; it is no use. We are just as determined as you are; and there is but one way to win back the colonies, as you call them, to their allegiance." "And how is that, pray?" "Why, by depopulating them, overwhelming them, killing the people, and wasting the land. Only a war of extermination will serve your purpose." "Well," said Hollins, doggedly, "if they must have it, they must--let it be extermination! The authority of the king and the power of Parliament must be upheld at all hazards." "Ah, that is easy enough to say," replied Katharine, "but three millions of English-speaking liberty-loving people are not to be blotted out by a wave of the hand; they are not so easily exterminated, as you will find. Besides, it is easy to speak in general terms; but thousands and thousands are young and helpless, or old and feeble,--grandsires or women or children,--how about them? As long as there is a woman left or a child, your task is yet unfulfilled. Make a personal application of it; I am one of them. Do you wish to exterminate me, sir?" she said, looking up at him brilliantly, with her glorious brown eyes. "Oh, you--you are different, of course," said the lieutenant, hesitatingly, not liking to face this intensely personal application of his intemperate remark. "Not I! I am just like the rest--" "Treason! I won't hear it," said Desborough, softly. "There are no others like you on earth." "Just like the rest," she continued emphatically, unheeding the interruption, which the others had hardly caught, "and I will tell you that never again will that flag at the gaff there be the flag of America. You have lost us for good." "Oh, don't say that. Make a personal exception of yourself at least, Miss Wilton, and give us room to hope a little." "No, no," she laughed. "You have lost us all--me included." There was a chorus of expostulation and argument immediately, but Miss Wilton was not to be overborne. "Father!" she called quickly to the colonel, who, followed by the captain, at once joined the little group of officers. "These gentlemen seem to doubt me when I say their sometime colonies are gone for good. Won't you help me to state the point so they will understand it?"