The tea urn was now brought in, and the family of Colonel Howard assembled around the well spread table. A short blessing interrupted by a few short pishes and pshaws! on account of the severe pains that constantly seized the old gentleman’s leg, was now said by him; and then the evening meal was quietly and systematically disposed of. Sage surmises as to the course of the belligerent stranger, and sager speculations as to the result of her meeting with an American cruizer, now occupied the thoughts and conversational powers of the little party; at length Colonel Howard began to grow drowsy. His arm chair was now wheeled to the right about—he gave his blessing to his nephew with a good will, grasped his hand with the frankness of a soldier, and bade him adieu; then bringing his crutch to the third position of the manual, he went to sleep. Soon the young couple heard the old man muttering in his visions of the revolution, “on to Princeton—ha, there goes Knox, I know his fire—onward my boys—huzza, they fly—the day is ours,” and then a twinge of the gout played the deuce with his dream, and when it past away he slumbered as sweetly as a child upon its mother’s breast. Fitzgerald and Mary now departed for Mrs. Wilson’s, the former having taken his baggage in the carriage, so as to be ready to step from the ball room to the stage-coach. Mrs. Wilson was one of those comets of fashion who regularly appear with every cycle of time, and who after setting the cities in a blaze, retire to the inland towns to renew their fires, and shine forth as planets of the first magnitude amid inferior stars; believing it to be better to be the head of a village than the tail of a city. It was currently reported by scandalising spinsters that she had been a milliner in England, and having a handsome person was hired by the manager of a country theatre, there to act the _goddess_ in the play of Cherry and Fair Star. Here she entrapped the affections of a young nobleman, who by a mock marriage became her reputed husband. The honey moon soon passed away, and with the realities of wedded life, came the astounding _denouement_ that the nobleman’s coachman had officiated as chaplain on the occasion, and that the marriage was a humbug. This was a downfall to Mrs. Wilson, but she had no help excepting to marry the butler of his lordship, a man of considerable wealth, and emigrate to America. His lordship was generous on the occasion: and the honest butler found himself with a wife, an estate, and an heir presumptive, all at the same moment. Having money and a handsome person, the beautiful and well dressed Mrs. Wilson soon imposed herself upon an aristocratic family in New York as a branch of a noble stock in England. Mr. Wilson, it may be proper to observe, died on his passage, and Mrs. Wilson was a widow when she made the highlands of Neversink.