"How do you do, father?" said Major Tom, holding out his hand to Mr. Shrimpton.
"But you are to be, as soon as I can find a minister. The past is past. I've come to take you and Mary to your old home. When it was sold, I bought it; you are to go back to it and live there. It is to be our home."
There is astonishment upon the cold, hard face, which relaxes its sternness; the chin quivers, the lips tremble, tears roll down the cheeks of the gray-haired exile. Through the years he has nursed his hate. But there is no sword so sharp, no weapon so keen to pierce the hardened human heart, as kindness. He has hated Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Tom Brandon; and this is Tom's revenge. His old home to be his own once more! No longer an exile! To sit once more by the old fireside, through the kindness of him whom he had turned from his door! His head drops upon his breast; he sobs like a child, but reaches out his arms to them.
"Take her, Tom. I've hated you, but God bless you; you were right, and I was wrong."
No longer hard-hearted, cold, and animated by hate, but as a little child he enters the doorway leading to the Kingdom of Heaven.
A man of stalwart frame, a woman radiant and beautiful, with a little boy and girl, are standing by the door of the humble home across the way; fellow-passengers with Major Tom on the Berinthia Brandon. Mr. Newville opens the door in answer to the knock, to be clasped in the arms of Ruth. Great the surprise, unspeakable the joy, of father, mother, and daughter, meeting once more, welcoming a worthy son, taking prattling grandchildren to their arms.
"We have come for you, and we are all going home together. You will find everything just as it was when you left," said Ruth.
Once more there were happy homes in Boston,--that upon Copp's Hill, where Berinthia and Abraham Duncan cared for the father and mother; that where Tom and Mary Shrimpton-Brandon made the passing days pleasant to Abel Shrimpton, loyal no longer to King George, but to the flag of the future republic; and that other home, where Major Robert Walden and his loving wife, with queenly grace, dispensed unstinted hospitality, not only to those distinguished among their fellow-men, but to the poor and needy, impoverished by the long and weary struggle for independence of the mother land. Abel Shrimpton and Theodore Newville were no longer exiles, but citizens, acknowledging cheerful allegiance to the flag of the confederation, through the fealty to liberty by the Daughters of the Revolution.