lid. The King! the King! How he will feel when he hears the news! And

he said of young Trumbull, ‘I pity him.’ His heart will go down like a sailor on the sea on a stormy night. Peter, I feel for him. Don’t you pity him? Sit down by me.”

He lifted the lid of the chest, and took out of the chest a leather bag. He untied the bag-string, and turned a pile of doubloons on the table.

“_One._ That is yours. You _came back_ to your poor old uncle on the night when the robber was trying to find me.

“_Two._ It is yours, for you came back.

“_Three._ My sight is going. It is all yours, for you came back.

“My hands grow numb, the world is going. I can feel it going. But all that I leave is yours. My breath grows cold. I have only time to say, ‘God save the King!’ I want to go, and leave what I have to you, Peter, for you came back. Good-by, earth; I leave you my woodpile; warm yourself by my fire when I am gone. God――save――the――King!”

He sat silent. Peter bent over him. The old man’s breath was cold, and soon the last pulse beat.

Peter gathered up the gold. He would turn it into education at Plainfield Academy and at Yale College. Then he would go away, after Dennis, perhaps, to the Western territory which would become a new Connecticut.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

――Except for the frontispiece, illustrations have been moved to follow the text that they illustrate.

――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.