V.—THE LEGEND OF GENERAL AGNEW AGAIN.
Along the solitary streets of Germantown, as the sun went down, rang
the echo of horses' hoofs, and the form of the rider of a gallant war steed
was seen, disclosed in the last beams of the dying day, as he took his way
along the village road.
The horseman was tall, well-formed, and muscular in proportion; his
hair was slightly touched with the frost of age, and his eye was wild and
wandering in its glance. The compressed lip, the hollow cheek, the flashing
eye, all told a story of powerful, through suppressed emotion, stirring
the warrior's heart to bitter thoughts and gloomy memories.
It was General Agnew, of the British army. He had fought bravely in
the fight of Chew's house, though the presentiment sat heavy on his soul;
he had fought bravely, escaped without a wound, and now was riding alone,
along the solitary street, toward the Mennonist grave-yard.
There was an expression on his commanding face that it would have
chilled your heart to see. It was an expression which stamped his features
with a look of doom and fate, which revealed the inward throbbings of his
soul, as the dark presentiment of the morning, moved over its shadowy
depths.
He may have been thinking of his home, away in the fair valleys of England—of
the blooming daughter, the bright-eyed boy, or the matronly wife—
and then a thought of the terrible wrong involved in the British cause may
have crossed his soul, for the carnage of Chew's lawn had been most fearful,
and it is not well to slay hundreds of living beings like ourselves, for
the shadow of a right.
He reached the point where the road sweeps down the hill, in front of
the grave-yard, and as he rode slowly down the ascent, his attention was
arrested by a singular spectacle.
The head of a man, grey-bearded and white haired, appeared above the
grave-yard wall, and a fierce, malignant eye met the gaze of General Agnew.
It was the strange old man who, in the morning, had asked whether “that
was General Grey?” pointing to the person of Agnew as he spoke, and
being answered, by mistake or design, in the affirmative, fired a rifle at the
officer from the shelter of the wall.
No sooner had the wild face rose above the wall than it suddenly disappeared,
and, scarce noting the circumstance, the General reined his steed for
a moment, on the descent of the hill, and gazed toward the western sky,
where the setting sun was sinking behind a rainbow hued pile of clouds, all
brilliant with a thousand contrasted lights.
The last beams of the sun trembled over the high forehead of General
Agnew, as, with his back turned to the grave-yard wall, he gazed upon the
prospect, and his eye lit up with a sudden brilliancy, when the quick
and piercing report of a rifle broke on the air, and echoed around the
scene.
A small cloud of light blue smoke wound upward from the grave-yard
wall, a ghastly smile overspread the face of Agnew, he looked wildly round
for a single instant, and then fell heavily to the dust of the road-side, a—
lifeless corse.
His gallant steed of ebon darkness of skin, lowered his proud crest, and
thrust his nostrils in his master's face, his large eyes dilating, as he snuffed
the scent of blood upon the air; and at the very moment that same wild
and ghastly face appeared once more above the stones of the grave-yard
wall, and a shriek of triumph, wilder and ghastlier than the face, arose
shrieking above the graves.
That rifle shot, pealing from the grave-yard wall, was the LAST SHOT of
the battle-day of Germantown; and that corse flung along the roadside, with
those cold eyes glaring on the blue sunset sky, with the death-wound near
the heart, was the LAST DEAD MAN of that day of horror.
As the sun went down, the dark horse lowered his head, and with quivering
nostrils, inhaled the last breath of his dying master.
