But , draining the last drops of their liquor , they stole timorously homeward , and answered not again if the rude mob reviled them in the street . Yet Esther Dudley 's most frequent and favored guests were the children of the town . Toward them she was never stern . A kindly and loving nature hindered elsewhere from its free course by a thousand rocky prejudices lavished itself upon these little ones . By bribes of gingerbread of her own making , stamped with a royal crown , she tempted their sunny sportiveness beneath the gloomy portal of the province-house , and would often beguile them to spend a whole play-day there , sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop-petticoat , greedily attentive to her stories of a dead world . And when these little boys and girls stole forth again from the dark , mysterious mansion , they went bewildered , full of old feelings that graver people had long ago forgotten , rubbing their eyes at the world around them as if they had gone astray into ancient times and become children of the past . At home , when their parents asked where they had loitered such a weary while and with whom they had been at play , the children would talk of all the departed worthies of the province as far back as Governor Belcher and the haughty dame of Sir William Phipps . It would seem as though they had been sitting on the knees of these famous personages , whom the grave had hidden for half a century , and had toyed with the embroidery of their rich waistcoats or roguishly pulled the long curls of their flowing wigs . `` 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 XXXXX 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 .
Toward around as by if in into of upon without