[Illustration: WADSWORTH HIDING THE CHARTER From a bas-relief on the State Capitol, Hartford, Conn.] We are not told what was said or done in the court chamber after the charter disappeared. The stories of that night are full of mystery and contradiction. Perhaps, after all, no very serious search was made for it. Perhaps its loss brought about a compromise between the two parties. For Governor Andros had already gained his object; he had taken over the government of Connecticut, and the people had saved their pride because they had not surrendered their charter. The charter lay hidden for two years; not all that time in the oak tree, of course, but in some other safe place. One tradition says it was kept for a while in Guilford in the house of Andrew Leete. At the end of two years there was a revolution in England, and William and Mary came to the English throne. Then the charter was taken out of its hiding-place--wherever that was--and government was at once resumed under the same old patent which had disappeared so mysteriously on that famous Allhallowe'en night. In the Memorial Hall of the State Library at Hartford, under a glass shield, in a fireproof compartment built into the end wall of the room, there hangs to-day one of the two original copies of the Connecticut Charter. It is in a good state of preservation, its lettering is clear and distinct, and so is the portrait engraved upon it of King Charles the Second who gave it to Governor John Winthrop. A part of its present frame is made from the wood of the Charter Oak. The other copy, that is, what remains of it, can be seen in the box which is owned by the Historical Society. When, after the Revolutionary War, the Colony of Connecticut became the State of Connecticut, the charter of the colony was adopted without alteration as the State Constitution. No change was made in it until 1818. The old oak tree, known to Indian legend and better known in Connecticut's story, lived, honored and protected, until its fall in the great storm of August 21, 1856. REFERENCES 1. Trumbull, Benjamin. _History of Connecticut_. Maltby Goldsmith & Co. New Haven, 1818. 2. Trumbull, J. Hammond (editor). _Memorial History of Hartford County_. E. L. Osgood. Boston, 1886. 3. Andrews, Charles M. "The River Towns of Connecticut," in _Johns Hopkins University Studies_, vn, 1-3, September, 1889. Baltimore, 1889. 4. Love, Wm. De Loss. _The Colonial History of Hartford_. Hartford, 1914. 5. Love, Wm. De Loss. "Hartford, the Keeper of Connecticut's Charter," in _Hartford in History_, Willis J. Twitchell (editor). Hartford, 1899. 6. Bates, Albert C. Article on "Charter Oak" in _Encyclopoedia Americana_. 7. Hoadly, Charles J. _The Hiding of the Charter_. Case, Lockwood & Brainard. Hartford, 1900. TWO INDIAN WARRIORS