"But who is this you have here?" The man opened his eyes at this moment and looked up vacantly. "William Bentley, sir," he said in a hoarse whisper, as if in answer to the question; and then making a vain effort to raise his hand to his head, he went on half-mechanically, "bosun of the Randolph, sir. Come aboard!" "Merciful Powers, it is old Bentley!" cried the colonel. "Can anything be done for you, my man? How is it with you?" Katharine poured a little more of the cordial down his throat, which gave him a fictitious strength for a moment, and he answered in a little stronger voice, with a glance of recognition and wonder,-- "The colonel and the young miss! we thought you dead in the wreck of the Radnor. He will be glad;" and then after a pause recollection came to him. "Oh, God!" he murmured, "Mr. Seymour!" "What of him? Speak!" cried Katharine, in agony. "Gone with the rest," he replied with an effort "'T was a good fight, though. The other ships,--where are they?" "Escaped," answered the colonel; "we are too much cut up to pursue." "Why did you do it?" moaned Katharine, thinking of Seymour's attack on the ship of the line. The old man did not heed the question; his eyes closed. He was still a moment, and then he opened his eyes again slowly. Straight above him waved the standard of his enemy. "I never thought--to die--under the English flag," he said slowly and with great effort. Supplying its place with her own young soft arm, Katharine drew forth the little American ensign which had served him for a pillow--stained with his own blood--and held it up before him. A light came into his dying eyes,--a light of heaven, perhaps, no pain in his heart now. One trembling hand would still do his bidding; by a superhuman effort of his resolute will he caught the bit of bunting and carried it to his lips in a long kiss of farewell. His lips moved. He was saying something. Katharine bent to listen. What was it? Ah! she heard; they were the words he said on the deck of the transport when they saw the ship wrecked in the pass in the beating seas,--the words he had repeated in the old farmhouse on that winter night to the great general, when he told the story of that cruise; the words he had made to stand for the great idea of his own life; the words with which he had cheered and soothed and sustained and encouraged many weaker men who had looked to his iron soul for help and guidance. They were the words to which many a patriot like him, now lying mute and cold upon the hills about Boston, under the trees at Long Island, by the flowing waters and frowning cliffs of the Hudson, on the verdant glacis at Quebec, 'neath the smooth surface of Lake Champlain, in the dim northern woods, on the historic field of Princeton, or within the still depths of this mighty sea now tossing them upon its bosom, had given most eloquent expression and final attestation. What were they?