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Two hours wore on, and then there came a rap at the door. Charles went and opened it. Eight men, bearing litters, on which were stretched two lifeless forms, were at the door. All were dripping with water. "Come in!" said Charles, and he sprang to seize Adelpha, who had fallen to the floor in a convulsion.
Cora had given up Charles Stevens, realizing that she was inferior and unworthy in every sense, and certainly not capable of competing with the daughter of the governor of New York. On the other hand, Adelpha saw a dangerous rival in this mysterious maid with eyes of blue and hair of gold; but Adelpha was honest and true, as were the old Knickerbockers who followed her.
The character of the assembly was thoroughly royalist. It passed several resolutions against Leisler, especially declaring his conduct at the fort an act of rebellion, and on the 15th of May, the second day of their session and the next after the arrival of Adelpha, Sloughter, in a moment of excitement, assented to the vote of the council, that Leisler and Milborne should be executed.
"No, mother. I will never forget the pretty maid." "Who, you said in your boyhood, was one day to be your wife." "Truly, I did. I have heard that Adelpha hath kept the promise of early childhood to make a beautiful woman. When will she come?" "It is said she will be here before next Lord's Day."
Let us go home." As the four wended their way across the fields and meadows, Charles Stevens, who walked between Cora and Adelpha, cast alternately furtive glances at each, sorely troubled to decide which he liked best. "Both are beautiful," he thought. "Ere long I must wed, and which of the twain shall it be? Both are beautiful, and both are good; but, unfortunately, they are two, and I am one."
"Perhaps 'tis so; but it seemed that my groans and sighs must be heard round the world, yet neither Cora Waters nor Adelpha Leisler, at whose side I stood a comforter in the dark hours of trouble, has seen fit to offer me one word of consolation." "I trow, Charles, that Adelpha knows it not. Cora is coming." "Who hath told you?"
Matthew Stevens had a Dutch friend, Hans Van Brunt, whom he met in Holland. When Van Brunt emigrated to New Amsterdam and Matthew Stevens to New Plymouth they renewed their friendship. Their descendants have always kept up the friendship. Matthew Stevens was my grandfather, and Hans Van Brunt was Adelpha Leisler's great-grandfather.
"Just like you, Cora, always afraid of making some one trouble." Her eyes were on the brooklet and filled with tears, as she remembered how happy Adelpha Leisler had been when at Salem, and how heavily the hand of affliction had fallen upon her. "Charles, were you with her when it happened?" she asked. "I was." "Did you comfort her?"
When quite a child, Adelpha's mother, the wife of a prosperous New York merchant, spent a year in Boston where I lived. It was then Adelpha and I first became acquainted." Cora's eyes were on the distant blue hills; but her thoughts seemed elsewhere. Charles would have given much to have known what was in her mind. Did she, in her heart, entertain hatred for Adelpha?
Then she hastened joyously, till she came to the extreme west, to the very edge of the world." "How could she get to the edge, when it is round?" interrupted Alice. "Probably the world was not round at that time," explained Adelpha. Charles went on: "The maid summoned all the powers of nature and the air, and bade them build a palace. It was not like other palaces.
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