“Nothing, nothing, my dove, that should alarm you. It is the order of nature, is it not, that parents should die before their children? But who talks of dying now? Your soft touches, my child, have given me new life and strength. Lend me your arm; I will retire.” “Let me sleep with you to-night, dear mother,” pleaded the maiden, from whose earnest face the paleness of fear had not yet vanished. An affectionate pressure of the hand was her only answer. And Margaret assisted Mrs. Helmstedt to gain her chamber. That night, in her prayers, Margaret earnestly thanked God that she had been led to come home so opportunely to her lonely mother’s help. And from that night the close union between the mother and daughter seemed even more firmly cemented. The next day Mr. Helmstedt returned. He had spent the night at Heathville, and called in the morning at Buzzard’s Bluff for Margaret, and hearing that she had grown anxious upon account of her mother left alone on the island, and had returned, he simply approved the step and dropped the subject. Later in the same week, Franky Houston, boy as he was, took a tearful leave of Margaret, turning back many times to assure her that Ralph, when he came, would not leave her to mope in loneliness, but would certainly, to the best of his ability, supply his (Franky’s) place. And so the candid, open-hearted boy left. And Margaret, who had grown to understand how dear she was to Franky, felt her heart stricken with compunction to know how glad she was that his place would soon be supplied by Ralph. Grace Wellworth and Clare Hartley had also returned to their city school. And “Island Mag” was left again companionless. Not for a long time. With the warm days of early summer came Ralph Houston, as he said, for a short visit home, before he should sail for Europe to make the grand tour. But this month of June, 1812, was a month big with the fate of nations as well as of individuals. The bitter disputes between the young Republic and the “Mother Country,” like all family quarrels, did not tend toward reconciliation, but on the contrary, month by month, and year by year, had grown more acrid and exasperating, until at length a war could no longer be warded off, and thus, without the least preparation, either military or naval, Congress on the eighteenth of June, 1812, declared war against Great Britain. Never had Young America before, and never since, taken so rash and impetuous a step. Never had an unfortunate country plunged headlong into an unequal and perilous war under more forbidding circumstances; with two formidable antagonists, and without either army or navy in readiness to meet them. Yet no sooner had the tocsin sounded through the land, than “the spirit of ’76” was aroused, and an army arose. Simultaneously, all over the country, volunteer companies were formed and marched toward the principal points of gathering.