University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
SUNSET UPON THE BATTLE FIELD.

The declining sun was again bathing the landscape
in its golden beauty, and each sloping hill,
and grassy pasturage, each leafy forest, dyed with
hues of autumn, and each level plain dotted with
orchards and varied by cultivation, looked more
lovely in the setting sunlight, since the raising of
the mist, had imparted new life and freshness to
the view, than when the uncertain beams of the
battle-morn glimmered among wreaths of clouds,
and threw a dim and pallid light along the darkened
air, deepened to the gloom of twilight by the smoke
and dust of battle.

“Will thee mount thy horse, Miss Waltham?
Dost not see, young lady, that friend Tracy is mounted
and ready to start? Nay, Betty Fisher do not
detain the maiden with thy endless gossip, and
Charles, man, what does thee stand grinning at
there, like another chessy-cat.”[2]

With many a warm expression of thanks and
courtesy to Miss Betty Fisher for her care and attendance,
Marian took the hand of the Quaker, and

sprang from the hall steps of Chew's mansion, on
to her favorite steed, which the watchful “Chawls
de Fust” had conveyed from the mansion on the
Ridge Road, over to Germantown, since the strife
and turmoil of the battle morning.

The fair form of Marian was robed in a green
riding habit, which fitted closely and gracefully
around her bust and shoulders, with a ruffle of delicate
white encircling the snowy neck, while the
skirt of the robe fell in voluminous folds over the
maidenly proportions of her figure, and resting upon
the saddle of her bounding steed, swept in a graceful
train until it touched the very earth. Her
glossy hair, with all its golden luxuriance, was
confined within the pressure of a small riding hood,
topped by a delicate white plume, and looped in
front with a brooch of the brightest lustre.

Marian's cheek, was deadly pale, and her eyes
were swollen with weeping, for the thought of her
father's death lay heavy at her heart, and as she
glanced at the tall form of Major Tracy, mounted
on his steed at her side, all the scenes of the day
that was well nigh over, and of the preceding night,
rose before her vivid fancy like the fresh remembrance
of the horrors of some terrible dream.

“Shall we move forward, friend Tracy? It lacks
but an hour of sunset—Charles, mount thy horse;
we must be moving.”

“It reely makes me quite solemn-like to see you

all a-going, and scarce a soul in the house but myself!”—exclaimed
Miss Betty Fisher, advancing to
the side of Marian's horse. “Oh dear, oh, dear,
here's been a purty day of it! And arter the unmannerly
soldiers have filled Mr. Chew's house
with dead, and broke the furnitur and scattered all
the chiney all over the house—Oh! goodness me!
They then must clear out Colonel Musgrave, Lieutenant
Wellwood and all, leavin' me to look to
their miserable place! Oh, lud, Miss Waltham, I
shall never get over this fright for a twelvemonth.
Don't look so sad—that's a dear”—continued the
loquacious house-keeper. “It's a comfort to you
to think, that the ribble officer did'nt run away with
you quite—”

“Verily, Miss Betty Fisher, thee will keep us
here, listening to this prattle, until to-morrow morn.
Let us push on, friend Tracy.”

“Good bye, Miss Waltham!” screamed Betty as
the party rode over the lawn—“Good bye, and
rimimber me to all inquirin' friends.”

“Gorra—mighty—lor bless me!” chuckled the
negro—“Dat ar' woman got a tongue like de hopper
of a flour mill! Clack—clack—and no stoppin'
when it gets a gwoin. Dat am a fac.”

As Marian rode along the lawn, toward the Germantown
Road, on her way homeward, she could
not help noting the awful quietness which had

gathered over the battle field, in place of the noise
and tumult of the morn.

The grounds, as well as the mansion, were deserted
by the British soldiers, and the dead were
strewn over the surface of the lawn in ghastly
heaps. The grass was trodden down, and wet with
blood, while every indentation or hollow of the
earth, was filled with a pool of the crimson current,
and here and there were were crevices dug in the
ground, by the rolling of the cannon wheels, now
affording temporary channels for the reception of
the clotted masses of human gore that made the
lawn a marsh of carnage.

Pieces of broken muskets, fragments of bayonets,
remnants of shattered swords littered the ground,
mingled with bullets and cannon balls, and all the
ten thousand wrecks of war and battle-strife, were
strewn along, amid the piles of dead bodies. The
beams of the setting sun gilded the pale faces of the
dead, with a momentary light that seemed like a
bitter mockery of the ruddy glow of life, and the
warm flush of health.

Marian beheld death in every shape and position.
Here an American soldier had fallen at the foot of
a tree, and died with his back propped against the
trunk, while his head fell to one side, and his mouth
opened with a ghastly grin. One hand clutched the
shattered musket-stock, and the other lay stiffened
on the wound in his side. Close by him, a British

soldier seemed to have been swept down in the
very moment of the charge. His back was turned
to the sky, one knee was bent in as if he had met
the death wound when running, and his face was
buried in the ground, while his arms were outstretched
and his stiffened fingers were thrust into
the upturned earth, as though he had grasped the
sod, in the convulsive throes of mortal agony.

Farther on lay a heap of dead, American and
Briton, Scot and German, interlocked in one ghastly
pile of mangled bodies, some with their faces
upturned to the sunlight, some with their hands upraised
as if to ward off the descending blow, others
with every limb contorted by the spasm that attends
a sudden and a painful death, while some there
were who lay extended upon the earth as calmly
and quietly as though they had but laid themselves
down to take a pleasant sleep.

Here lay a youth, clad in the rustic dress of an
American farmer's boy. He lay on his side with
his tangled brown hair thrown over his forehead,
his sunburnt cheek crimsoned with spots of blood,
and his plain and uncouth garments drilled with
bullet holes, and torn by sword thrusts. His old-fashioned
fowling piece, the companion of many a
wild ramble amid the solitudes of the forest, lay
near his side, and his arm was stretched out as
though he grasped it in his death struggle, but the

stiffened fingers could but touch the shattered stock
without enclosing it in their dying embrace.

And thus along the whole field, in each nook,
each grassy hollow, along the surface of each level
plane, were scattered those who had fallen in the
morning's struggle, resting in all the ghastliness of
death, upon the sod which had bounded beneath
their tread at the hour of sunrise. Had aught been
wanting to complete the picture, it was supplied
by the presence of various mercenary wretches,
who, hovering upon the outskirts of the field, stripped
and plundered the dead, and scared away a
flock of ravens, who had perched upon their victims,
in anticipation of a plentiful banquet.

“God of mercy!” exclaimed the Quaker, as his
eye drank in the horrors of the battle field, “if
ever the fancy might imagine that spirits of the
dark world had built a loathsome mockery of
every high and heavenly sympathy that dwells in
the bosom of man, surely that mocking spectacle
is here, and man outraging all feelings of brotherhood,
all feelings of affection, all that is good or
holy in his nature, has laid his fellow man down
upon the earth in all the shapes of death, and
every mangled limb and torn carcase, seems to
bear witness that the Lord God dwelleth not in
man, but rather that he is the temple of the Evil
One!”

As he spoke, the party reached the main road, and

Major Tracy spurred on his steed some hundred
yards ahead of his companions, and riding in full
gallop, he seemed to woo the current of freshening
air, as it swept over his hot brow and burning
cheek, without for an instant allaying the fever of
his mind.