University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.

The young partisan, Frampton, to whom Singleton
had intrusted so leading a part in the enterprise, had
well fulfilled the duty assigned him. He had put himself
in readiness, with the first appearance of the
marauders; and, with a heart throbbing with anxiety
all the while, had witnessed impatiently the progress
of the preceding scene, until broken by the emphatic
utterance of the signal, and his own prompt obedience
to its dictates. Then, with an instinct, which, in that
moment, silenced and stilled the quick pulsation of his
breast, had he raised the deadly weapon to his shoulder;
and with a determined coolness that arose, as it
were, from a desire to convince himself, not less than
his commander, that he could be firm, he had twice
varied his aim, until perfectly assured, he had drawn
the trigger, and most opportunely singled out a different
victim from that which Gaskens had contemplated for
the fatal sisters, in the person of that foul murderer
himself.

There was a moment of dreadful pause after this
event. The rope fell from the hands of the executioner,
and his eyes, and the eyes of all, were turned in
doubt and astonishment upon the quarter from whence
the deadly messenger had proceeded. The condemned
man seized the opportunity to throw from his
body the lifeless carcass of the slain tory; and not

doubting that farther aid was at hand, and looking for a
close struggle, he crawled along the hill for shelter to
the neighbouring tree. His effort was interrupted;
for, in the next moment, another and another shot selected
their victims; then came the full volley; and
then the loud voice of Singleton, as, plunging through
the copse, he led the way for his men, who charged the
confused and terrified tories on every side. They
scarcely showed sign of fight. One or two offered
resistance boldly, and with as much skill as resolution;
but they were soon overpowered, as they received
no support from their comrades, who were now
scampering in the bushes in every direction. The
surprise had been complete; not a man was seriously
hurt among the whigs, while every rifle, fired in the
first of the fray, had told fatally upon its victim.
Seven were slain outright, a few more sabred, and
some few were made prisoners—the rest took the back
track into the woods, and though pursued, contrived,
with few exceptions, to make their escape.

The boy, meanwhile, had well performed the other
duty which had been given to his charge. The conflict,
pellmell, had scarcely begun, when, slipping
noiselessly round to the hollow where the prisoners
were confined, so as not to arouse the notice of the two
sentinels having them in custody, and whose eyes were
now turned in surprise upon the unlooked-for contest,
he cut the cords which bound them; and, prompt as
himself, they were no sooner free, than they seized
upon their guards and disarmed them. The ropes
were transferred to other hands than their own. This
was all the work of an instant; so, indeed, was
the affray itself; and the first object that met the eyes
of Singleton as he returned from the charge to the
spot where it first began, was the person of the boy
bending over the man he had shot, and curiously inspecting
the bullet hole which he had made through
and through his forehead.

“Ha, boy!” said Singleton; “you have done well—
you have behaved like a man.”

“Oh, sir, tell me,” cried the boy, “was this the
man that was swearing so, but a minute ago? and can
this be the bullet hole from my rifle?”

“It is; this is the wretch, and your bullet was in
the right time.”

“Oh, sir, he was cursing when I fired: and then the
poor man he was going to hang—I was so afraid that
you would not say, `now,' soon enough to save him.
But I feel so strange!”

“How, boy?”

“I have killed a man: what would my poor mother
say, if she was alive and knew it?”

“Go, go, boy, you have done well; you have shot
him in a good cause, and have saved innocent life
besides. You could not have done better—but don't
think of it.”

“I can't help thinking of it, sir,” said the boy, upon
whom a new experience was dawning rapidly, as he
moved back to the copse where he had been concealed,
to resume his jacket and rifle which he had there
thrown aside.

In another quarter of the field, the scene which met
the eye of Singleton was one of those which amply
compensate for the pain and the peril, the dread and
the anxiety, through which men must pass to witness
them:—the sudden emancipation of the prisoners to
life and freedom—the erect aspect of the beaten and
bound man—the body realizing, in the moment of its
rescue, the liberty for which the mind had been yearning,
and whose value can only be duly estimated by
its privation. A cry—a cheer of joy—was upon every
lip; as the bird, escaping from his cage, attests the
consciousness of his new condition of freedom, in
song, not less than flight.

Conspicuous among the prisoners, in their joy upon
this occasion, was the family of the brave but suffering
wretch who had so narrowly escaped the halter.
Revived by the noise, the rush, the firing, and confusion
of the fight, as much as by the earnest cares of her
daughter, his wife had been filled with a new anxiety,

along with the new hope, when she found that, though
execution had not been done upon her husband, as so
nearly promised, her eyes could not trace out his person
in the midst of the fierce melée which followed the
first arrest of his doom. A moment after, and her
arms were about his neck: and though unused to the
melting mood, the tears forced themselves into the
eyes of Singleton, as he surveyed their meeting—the
sweetness of their sorrow—the joy which is tearful
—the pleasure which almost grows into pain, in the
depth of its pure intensity.

“Safe, oh safe, Walter Griffin! and there is no
more danger, my husband!”

“None, none! we are safe, we are all safe, Ellen!”

“And where is Gaskens?”

“The wretch is on his back. God bless the bullet
that came in time, and the true hand that sent it.”

“And we are free, my father, to go home again—to
our own home?” said the daughter, as she took the
hand of her father in both of her own.

“Home! where is it?” he exclaimed fiercely, and
with the same savage expression with which his eyes
had regarded Gaskens, even in the moment of his
greatest danger. “Where is it? Did you not see the
blaze through the trees, as we looked back? Did he
not throw the torch into the loft with his own accursed
hands? and yet you ask for our home. We have no
home, girl.”

“But we are free, my husband, we are free. You
will go to work—we will soon have another in the old
place, and we can lodge in a shed till then.”

“Never, never! I do no such folly. What! to be
burnt down again by other tories?—no, no! I am
chopped already—I cannot be chopped much worse,
and live; and if I must suffer, let me suffer with those
who will help me to strike, too, and to revenge. I will
burn too; I will kill too. I will have blood for what I
have lost, and the sufferings of others shall pay me
for my own and yours.”

Singleton approached at this moment, and the prisoners,

so lately freed, gathered around him. Each had
his own story of affliction to tell, and each more
mournful than the other.

“They chased me, it mought be a matter of three
miles, 'fore I gin up, captain, and they wore out a
bunch of hickories on my back, because I run—see to
the marks,” was the complaint of one. Another had
his tale of petty treachery: his neighbour who had
eaten a hundred times of his bacon and hoecake, had
come in the night time, shot down his cattle, and,
finally, led the tories to his door to slaughter him.
Another had his wife shot in her bed, in mistake
for himself, while he was traversing the swamp to
make his escape. And so on—one with simple cruelty,
one with burning, one with murder, and one with even
more atrocious crimes—each of the prisoners had his
own and his family's sufferings, at the hands of the
blood-thirsty tories, to narrate to their deliverer.

Singleton administered his consolations, and put
arms into their hands. The greater number of them
joined him; those who did not, receiving the upbraidings,
in no stinted measure, of those who did. The
lately doomed prisoner, Griffin, seized upon a broadsword—a
massive weapon, which had fallen from the
hands of a huge-limbed tory—and proffered himself the
first. His wife laid her hand upon his arm—

“Oh, husband, you are not a-going to join the troops?
you are not going a-fighting?”

He looked sternly upon her, and shook away the
grasp—

“Ay, but I am! you shan't keep me from my duty
now. I wanted to come out six months ago, but you
tried the same game over me, and I was fool enough
to mind you, and see how it's turned out. Our cattle
shot—the house burnt—the farm destroyed—and me
chopped up, and almost hung; and all owing to you.”

The woman sank back at the reproach. The girl
came between them—

“Oh, father, don't speak so to mother. Now, mother,

he don't mean it; he's only fierce because of the
fighting.”

“I do mean it! I do mean it! She whined, and
begged, and cried, and kept me back, until the bloody
varmints overcrowed us at every turn. She shall
keep me back no longer. I say to you, captain, here's
an arm, and here's a sword: to be sure the arm's
chopped, and the owner is ragged with cuts and
scratches; but no matter, they're true blood, and, by
God, it's at your service, for old Carolina. Put me
down in your orderly book as one of your men, as
long as the troop holds together. Wat Griffin is one
of your men, and one of Marion's men, and one of all
men that are enemies to the tories.”

The man was resolved, and his wife spared all farther
speech. She knew how unavailing was the woman's
pleading against the resolute will of the man,
once determined upon. She clung to his arm, however;
and it could be seen, in that moment of affliction
and of peril, of trying adventure and long fatigue
rising up before them, that the firmness of her resolution
to share his fortunes was equal to that which had
determined him upon them.

An hour's labour buried the bodies of the men who
had fallen in the conflict. The recruits were well
armed from the hands of those who had perished and
become prisoners; and, with a troop now grown to a
respectable size, from the acquisitions of the morning,
Singleton prepared for his farther progress. The men
were soon mounted, some riding double, as the number
of horses was not equal to that of the partisans.
The prisoners were driven along before them, and,
rather more slowly than they otherwise would have
been, not thus embarrassed, our little corps of patriots
was soon in motion. Singleton led the march at a
gentle pace—the boy Frampton, as had latterly been
his usage, taking his place and keeping close alongside
of his commander.