The coming of Rochambeau, under the influence of the poor tallow chandler's son, was a re-enforcement that helped to gain the victory of liberty. When Cornwallis was taken, Jane Mecom heard the Castle thunder again over the sea; and when Rochambeau came to Boston to prepare for the re-embarkation of the French army, she saw her brother's hand behind all these events, and felt like one who in her girlhood had been taken into the counsels of the gods. Her simple family affairs had become those of the nation. She knew the springs of the nation's history, and she loved to recall the days when her brother was Silence Dogood, which he had never ceased to be. CHAPTER XXXVIII. FRANKLIN SIGNS THE TREATY OF PEACE.--HOW GEORGE III RECEIVES THE NEWS. THE surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown brought the war to an end. The courier from the army came flying into Philadelphia at night. The watchman called out, "Past twelve o'clock, and all is well!" "Past one o'clock, and all is well!" and "Past two o'clock, and Cornwallis is taken!" The people of the city were in the streets early that morning. Bells pealed; men saluted each other in the name of "Peace." Poor George III! He had stubbornly sought to subdue the colonies, and had honestly believed that he had been divinely appointed to rule them after his own will. No idea that he had ever been pigheaded and wrong had ever been driven into his dull brain. His view of his prerogative was that whatever he thought to be best was best, and they were ungrateful and stiff-necked people who took a different view, and that it was his bounden duty to punish such in his colonies for their obstinacy. It was November 25th in London--Sunday. A messenger came flying from the coast to Pall Mall. He was bearing exciting news. On he went through London until he reached the house of George Germain, Minister of American Affairs. The messenger handed to Lord George a dispatch. The minister glanced at it and read the fate of the New World, and must have stood as one dazed: "Cornwallis has surrendered!" Lord Walsingham, an under-Secretary of State, was at the house. To him he read the stunning dispatch. The two took a hackney coach and rode in haste to Lord Stormont's. "Mount the coach and go with us to Lord North's. Cornwallis is taken!" Lord Stormont mounted the coach, and the three rode to the office of the Secretary of State. The prime minister received the news, we are told, "as he would have taken a ball into his heart." "O God, it is all over!" he exclaimed, pacing up and down the room, and again and again, "O God, it is over!" The news was conveyed to the king that half of his empire was lost--that his hope of the New World was gone. How was the king affected? Says a writer of the times, who gives us a glance at this episode: