months, was liberated by some French Jesuits and went to France and thence to England, hoping to I was several weeks at our old home near

see you. Stockton.

Then I came back to America and have

been in New York trading in furs.”

A silence of several moments followed. George, whose soul seemed stirred with some deep emotions, asked:

“Harry, while in England, in Stockton, did you see her?"

Harry knew to whom he referred, and he answered:

"No."

"Where is she?"

"I know not."

"Do you know whether she be living or dead?" "I do not."

"God grant that she be dead!"

At this moment, Cora, who had followed behind them and overheard their strange words, came forward and asked:

"Father, what do you mean?"

"Nothing, child. There, let us return to the house, for it is growing late."

Then, as they walked up the gentle slope to the cabin of the widow, the maiden repeated to herself: "But he does mean something!"

CHAPTER VIII.

MOVING ONWARD.

Laws formed to harmonize contrarious creeds,
And heal the wounds through which a nation bleeds;
Laws mild, impartial, tolerant and fixed,

A bond of union for a people mixed;
Such as good Calvert framed for Baltimore,
And Penn the Numa of th' Atlantic shore.

THE Stevens family were so intimately related to their country, that the history of one is the history of the other. Philip Stevens, or Estevan, had located in the south and left behind a numerous progeny, while his brother Mathew, who came over in the Mayflower, had left an equally large family in New England. Their descendants began to push out into the frontier colonies, those in the south going as far north as Pennsylvania, and those in the east pushing out westward to New York and New Jersey.

The family were lovers of freedom, and, wherever a struggle has been made on American soil for liberty, one of these descendants of the youth who landed on American soil with Columbus, in 1492,

has been found. They disliked Andros, and the members of this now extensive and widely scattered family were in sackcloth and ashes, so to speak, when King James, in 1688, gave Andros a viceregal commission to rule New York and all New England.

When the viceroy journeyed from Boston to New York City, early in August the same year, George Stevens, a cousin of Charles, accompanied him, and saw Andros received by Colonel Bayard's regiment of foot and horse, who was entertained by the loyal aristocrat. In the midst of the rejoicings, the news came that the queen, the second wife of James, had been blessed with a son, who became heir to the throne. The event was celebrated the same evening by bonfires in the streets and a feast at the city hall. At the latter, Major Van Cortlandt became so hilarious, that he made a burnt sacrifice to his loyalty of his hat and periwig, waving the burning victims over the banquet table on the point of his straight sword.

Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of King James, had married the Prince of Orange, and this new birth in the royal family was a disappointment to the Dutch inhabitants of New York, as well as the Protestant republicans, who had begun to hope that William and Mary would succeed James to the throne of England. This event inten

sified the general discontent, because of the consolidation of New York with New England and the abridgment of their rights, and the people were ready to rebel at almost any moment, especially as Andros had rendered himself particularly obnoxious.

Like the other colonies, Maryland was shaken by the revolution in England, in 1688, and, for a while, experienced deep sorrows. The democratic ideas, which, for several years, had been spreading over the provinces, could not reconcile the rule of a lord proprietor with the true principles of republicanism. Even when Charles Calvert went to England after the death of his father, signs of political discontent were conspicuous in Maryland. In 1678, the general assembly, influenced by the popular feeling, established the right of suffrage— "casting of a vote for rulers"-on a broad basis. On the return of Charles, in 1681, he annulled this act and, by an arbitrary ordinance, resisted the right of freemen owning fifty acres of land, or personal property of the value of forty pounds sterling. This produced great disquietude, and Ex-Governor Fendall planned an insurrection for the purpose of abolishing the proprietorship and establishing an independent republican government. The king was induced to issue orders that all the offices of the government in Maryland should be filled by

Protestants alone; and so, again, the Roman Catholics were deprived of their political rights.

Lord Baltimore went to England again, in 1684, leaving the government of his province in charge of several deputies under the nominal governorship of his infant son. There he found his rights in great peril; but before the matter could be brought to a direct issue by the operation of a writ of quo warranto, King James was driven from the throne, and Protestant William and Mary ascended it. Lord Baltimore immediately acquiesced in the political change. On account of his instructions to his deputies to proclaim the new monarchs being delayed in their transmission, he was charged with hesitancy; and a restless spirit named Coode, an associate of Fendall in his insurrectionary movements—“a man of loose morals and blasphemous speech"-excited the people by the cry of "a popish plot!" He was the author of a false story put in circulation, that the local magistrates in Maryland and the Roman Catholics there had engaged with the Indians in a plot for the destruction of the Protestants in the province. An actual league at that time between the French and the Jesuit missionaries with the savages on the New England frontiers for the destruction of the English colonies in the east seemed to give color to the story, which created great excitement. The old feud burned in