`` But Governor Belcher has been dead this many a year , '' would the mother say to her little boy . `` And did you really see him at the province-house ? '' -- `` Oh yes , dear mother -- yes ! '' the half-dreaming child would answer . `` But when old Esther had done speaking about him , he faded away out of his chair . '' Thus , without affrighting her little guests , she led them by the hand into the chambers of her own desolate heart and made childhood 's fancy discern the ghosts that haunted there . Living so continually in her own circle of ideas , and never regulating her mind by a proper reference to present things , Esther Dudley appears to have grown partially crazed . It was found that she had no right sense of the progress and true state of the Revolutionary war , but held a constant faith that the armies of Britain were victorious on every field and destined to be ultimately triumphant . Whenever the town rejoiced for a battle won by Washington or Gates or Morgan or Greene , the news , in passing through the door of the province-house as through the ivory gate of dreams , became metamorphosed into a strange tale of the prowess of Howe , Clinton or Cornwallis . Sooner or later , it was her invincible belief , the colonies would be prostrate at the footstool of the king . Sometimes she seemed to take for granted that such was already the case . On one occasion she startled the townspeople by a brilliant illumination of the province-house with candles at every pane of glass and a transparency of the king 's initials and a crown of light in the great balcony-window . The figure of the aged woman in the most gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and brocades was seen passing from casement to casement , until she paused before the balcony and flourished a huge key above her head . Her wrinkled visage actually gleamed with triumph , as if the soul within her were a festal lamp . `` What means this blaze of light ? What does old Esther 's joy portend ? '' whispered a spectator . `` It is frightful to , see her gliding about the chambers and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her company . '' `` It is as if she were making merry in a tomb , '' said another . `` Pshaw !
It is no such mystery , '' observed an old man , after some brief exercise XXXXX memory .
On about at by for in into of that with