The Carolinian

With compressed lips and an upright line of pain between his brows, Mr.
Harry Latimer sat down to write a letter. He had taken--as he was
presently to express it--his first wound in the cause of Liberty, which
cause he had lately embraced. This wound, deep, grievous and apparently
irreparable, had been dealt him by the communication in the sheets which
hung now from his limp fingers.

It had reached him here at Savannah, where he was engaged at the time,
not only on behalf of the Carolinian Sons of Liberty--of which seditious
body he was an active secret member--but on behalf of the entire colonial
party, in stirring the Georgians out of their apathy and into
co-operation with their Northern brethren to resist the harsh measures of
King George's government.

This letter, addressed to him at his Charles Town residence, had been
forwarded thence by his factor, who was among the few whom in those days
he kept informed of his rather furtive movements. It was written by the
daughter of his sometime guardian, Sir Andrew Carey, the lady whom it had
been Mr. Latimer's most fervent hope presently to, marry. Of that hope
the letter made a definite end, and from its folds Mr. Latimer had
withdrawn the pledge of his betrothal, a ring which once had belonged to
his mother.

Myrtle Carey, those lines informed him, had become aware of the
treasonable activities which were responsible for her lover's long
absences from Charles Town. She was shocked and grieved beyond expression
by any words at her command to discover this sudden and terrible change
in his opinions. More deeply still was she shocked to learn that it was
not only in heart and mind that he was guilty of disloyalty, but that he
had already e so far as to engage in acts of open rebellion. And at, full
length with many plaints and upbraidings, she .displayed her knowledge of
one of these acts. She had learnt that the raid upon the royal armoury at
Charles. Town in April last had been undertaken at his instigation and
under his personal direction, and this at a time when, in common with all
save his fellow-traitors, she believed him to be in Boston engaged in the
transaction of personal affairs. She deplored--and this cut him perhaps
more keenly than all the rest--the deceit which he had employed; but it
no longer had power to surprise her, since deceit and dissimulation were
to be looked for as natural in one so lost to all sense of duty to his
king.

The letter concluded with the pained assertion that whatever might have
been her feelings for him in the past, and whatever tenderness for him
might still linger in her heart, she could never king herself to marry a
man guilty of the abominable disloyalty end rebellion by which Harry
Latimer had disgraced himself for ever. She would pray God that he might
yet be restored to sane and honourable views, and that thus he might
avoid the terrible fate which the royal government could not fail sooner
or later to visit upon him should he continue in his present perverse and
wicked course.

Three times Mr. Latimer had read that letter, and long had he pondered it
between readings. And if each time his pain increased, his surprise
lessened. After all, it was no more than he should have expected, just as
he had expected and been prepared for furious recriminations from his
sometime guardian when knowledge of his defection should reach Sir
Andrew. For than Sir Andrew Carey there was no more intolerant or bigoted
tory in all America. Loyalty with him amounted, to a religion; and just
as religious feeling becomes intensified in the devout under persecution
or opposition, so had the loyalty of Sir Andrew Carey burnt with a
fiercer, whiter flame than ever from the moment that he perceived the
signs of smouldering rebellion about him.