there were some ragged remnants of black silk, indicating that a veil had formerly hung down before the picture, until the duskiness of time had so effectually concealed it. But, after all, it was the most singular part of the affair, that so many of the pompous governors of Massachusetts had allowed the obliterated picture to remain in the state chamber of the Province House.

‘Some of these fables are really awful,’ observed Alice Vane, who had occasionally shuddered, as well as smiled, while her cousin spoke. ‘It would be almost worth while to wipe away the black surface of the canvas, since the original picture can hardly be so formidable as those which fancy paints instead of it.’

‘But would it be possible,’ inquired her cousin, ‘to restore this dark picture to its pristine hues?’

‘Such arts are known in Italy,’ said Alice.

The Lieutenant-Governor had roused himself from his abstracted mood, and listened with a smile to the conversation of his young relatives. Yet his voice had something peculiar in its tones, when he undertook the explanation of the mystery.

‘I am sorry, Alice, to destroy your faith in the legends of which you are so fond,’ remarked he; ‘but my antiquarian researches have long since made me acquainted with the subject of this picture—if picture it can be called—which is no more visible, nor ever will be, than the face of the long-buried man whom it once represented. It was the portrait of Edward Randolph, the found of this house, a person famous in the history of New England.’

‘Of that Edward Randolph,’ exclaimed Captain Lincoln, ‘who obtained the repeal of the first provincial charter, under which our forefathers had enjoyed almost democratic privileges! He that was styled the archenemy of New England, and whose memory is still held in detestation, as the destroyer of our liberties!’

‘It was the same Randolph,’ answered Hutchinson, moving uneasily in his chair. ‘It was his lot to taste the bitterness of popular odium.’

‘Our annals tell us,’ continued the Captain of Castle William, ‘that the curse of the people followed this Randolph where he went, and wrought evil in all the subsequent events of his life, and that its effect was seen likewise in the manner of his death. They say, too, that the inward misery of that curse worked itself outward, and was visible on the wretched man’s countenance, making it too horrible to be looked upon. If so, and if this picture truly represented his aspect, it was in mercy that the cloud of blackness has gathered over it.’

‘These traditions are folly, to one who has proved, as I have, how little of historic truth lies at the bottom,’ said the Lieutenant-Governor. ‘As regards the life and character of Edward Randolph, too implicit credence has been given to Dr. Cotton Mather, who—I must say it, though some of his blood runs in my veins—has filled our early history with old women’s tales, as fanciful and extravagant as those of Greece or Rome.’

‘And yet,’ whispered Alice Vane, ‘may not such fables have a moral? And, methinks, if the visage of this portrait be so dreadful, it is not without a cause that it has hung so long in a chamber of the Province House. When the rulers feel themselves irresponsible, it were well that they should be reminded of the awful weight of a people’s curse.’

The Lieutenant-Governor started, and gazed for a moment at his niece, as if her girlish fantasies had struck upon some feeling in his own breast, which all his policy or principles could not entirely subdue. He knew, indeed, that Alice, in spite of her foreign education, retained the native sympathies of a New England girl.

‘Peace, silly child,’ cried he, at last, more harshly than he had ever before addressed the gentle Alice. ‘The rebuke of a king is more to be dreaded than the clamour of a wild, misguided multitude. Captain