University of Virginia Library

4. BOOK FOURTH.
THE BATTLE OF BRANDYWINE.

THE BATTLE OF BRANDYWINE.

I.—THE GLORY OF THE LAND OF PENN.

Beautiful in her solitary grandeur—fair as a green island in a desert
waste, proud as a lonely column, reared in the wilderness—rises the land
of Penn, in the History of America.

Here, beneath the Elm of Shackamaxon, was first reared the holy altar
of Toleration.

Here, from the halls of the old State House, was first proclaimed, that
Bible of the Rights of Man—the Declaration of Independence.

Here, William Penn asserted the mild teachings of a Gospel, whose
every word was Love. Here, Franklin drew down the lightnings from the
sky, and bent the science of ages to the good of toiling man. Here, Jefferson
stood forth, the consecrated Prophet of Freedom, proclaiming, from
Independence Hall, the destiny of a Continent, the freedom of a People.

Here, that band of men, compared to whom the Senators of Rome dwindle
into parish demagogues,—the Continental Congress—held their solemn
deliberations, with the halter and the axe before their eyes.

New England we love for her Adams', her Hancocks, and her Warrens.
Her battlefields of Bunker Hill and Concord and Lexington, speak to us
with a voice that can never die. The South, too, ardent in her fiery blood,
luxuriant in flowers and fruits, we love for her Jefferson, her Lees, her immortal
Patrick Henry. Not a rood of her soil but is richer for the martyr
blood of heroes.

But while we love the North or the South for their Revolutionary glories,
we must confess that the land of Penn claims a glory higher and holier than
either. The glory of the Revolution is hers, but the mild light of science
irradiates her hills, the pure Gospel of William Penn shines forever over
the pages of her past.

While we point to Maryland for her Calvert and her Carroll, to Jersey
for her Witherspoon, to Delaware for her Kirkwood and M'Lane—while
we bow to the Revolutionary fame of New England and the South, we
must confess that the land of Penn has been miserably neglected by history.

It is a singular fact, that while all other States have their eulogists, their
historians, and their orators, to speak of their past glory, their present prosperity,
and their present fame, yet has Pennsylvania been neglected; she

has been slighted by the historian; her triumphs and her glories have been
made a matter of sparse and general narrative.

Our own fair land of Penn has no orator to celebrate her glories, to point
to her past; she has no Pierpont to hymn her illustrious dead; no Jared
Sparks to chronicle her Revolutionary granduer.

And yet the green field of Germantown, the twilight vale of the Brandywine,
the blood-nurtured soil of Paoli, all have their memories of the Past,
all are stored with their sacred treasure of whitened bones. From the far
North, old Wyoming sends forth her voice—from her hills of granduer and
her vallies of beauty, she sends her voice, and at the sound the Mighty Dead
of the land of Penn sweep by, a solemn pageant of the Past. The character
of the Pennsylvanian has been mockingly derided, by adventurers from
all parts of the Union. We have been told that our people—the Pennsylvanians—had
no enterprise, no energy, no striking and effective qualities.
Southern chivalry has taunted us with our want of daring ardor in the resentment
of insult; Northern speculation has derided our sluggishness in
falling into all the mad adventures of these gambling and money-making times.

To the North we make no reply. Let our mountains, with their stores
of exhaustless wealth, answer; let the meadows of Philadelphia, the rich
plains of old Berks, the green fields of Lancaster answer; let old Susquehannah,
with her people of iron nerve, and her mountain-shores of wealth
and cultivation, send forth her reply.

And to the South—what shall be our answer? They ask for our illustrious
dead! They point to the blood stained fields of Carolina. They ask,
where are your fields of battle? They point to Marion—to Sumpter—to
Lee—to all the host of heroes who blaze along the Southern sky—“Pennsylvanians,
where are your heroes of the Revolution?”

They need not ask their question more than once. For, at the sound,
from his laurelled grave in old Chester, springs to life again, the hero of
Pennsylvania's olden time, the undaunted General, the man of Paoli and of
Stony Point, whose charge was like the march of the hurricane, whose
night-assault scared the British as though a thunderbolt had fallen in their midst.

We need not repeat his name. The aged matron, sitting at the farm-house
door of old Chester, in the calm of summer twilight, speaks that
name to the listening group of grand-children, and the old Revolutioner,
trembling on the verge of the grave, his intellect faded, his mind broken,
and his memory gone, will start and tremble with a new life at the name,
and as he brushes the tear from the quivering eye-lid of age, will exclaim—
with a feeling of pride that a century cannot destroy—“I—I, too, was a
soldier with—mad Anthony Wayne!”

Bunker Hill has its monument, New England her historians, South Carolina
her orators—but the field of Germantown, and the meadows of Brandywine—where
are their monumental pillars, their historians, their orators?

And yet the freemen of our Land of Penn may stroll over the green lawn

of Germantown, mark the cannon-rifts on the walls of Chew's House, hear
the veteran of the Revolution discourse of the bloodshed of the 4th of October,
1777—and count the mounds that mark the resting place of the dead,
and feel his heart throb, and his pulse warm, although no monumental
pillar arises from the green lawn, no trophied column consecrates the repose
of the slain.

And when the taunt falls from the lips of the wanderer and adventurer,
when the South sneers and the north derides, then let the Pennsylvanian
remember that though the Land of Penn has no history, yet is her story
written on her battlefields of blood; that though she has no marble pillars,
or trophied columns, yet her monuments are enduring and undecaying—
they are there—breaking evermore into the sky—her monuments are her
own eternal mountains.

Her dead are scattered over the Continent;—Quebec and Saratoga,
Camden and Bunker Hill, to this hour retain their bones!

Nameless and unhonored, “Poor Men Heroes” of Pennsylvania
sleep the last slumber on every battlefield of the Revolution. Their history
would crowd ten volumes like this; it has never been written.

In every spear of grass that grows on our battlefields, in every wild
flower that blooms above the dead of the Revolution, you read the quiet
heroism of the children of the Land of Penn.

Be just to us, People of the North! Do not scorn our history, Chivalry
of the South!

While we gladly admit the brightness of your fame, do not utterly forget
the nameless and neglected

Heroes of the Land of Penn.

II.—THE PROPHET OF THE BRANDYWINE.

The Alleghanies lifting their summits into the sky, while their sides are
gorgeous with the draperies of autumn, and old Susquehanna flows grandly
at their feet! This is a sight at once religious and sublime.

The Wissahikon, flowing for miles through its dark gorge, where grey
rocks arise and giant pines interlock their branches from opposing cliffs!
This is a sight of wild romance—a vision of supernatural beauty.

But when you seek a vision of that pastoral loveliness, which fired the
poets of Greece and Rome,—that loveliness which presents in one view, the
ripeness of the orchard, the green slope of the meadow, the mirror-like
beauty of tranquil waters,—then come with me to the shades of Brandywine!

In the southern part of old Chester County—near the line of Pennslyvania
and Delaware—this valley bursts on your eye, in one vivid panorama
of beauty and gloom.

It seems as though the hand of God, stretched out from yonder sky, had
scattered his blessings broadcast over hill and dale.

A clear and glassy stream, now overshadowed by drooping elm or oaken
trees, now open to the gleam of the sunlight, winds along amid the recesses
of this valley. Sloping to the east, a plain of level earth spreads green and
grassy—a lake of meadow—winding with each bend of the rivulet on the
one side, and arising on the other into massive, mound-like hills. These
hills are baptized in beauty. Here crowded into one glowing view, you
may behold the chesnut, the oak, and the beech tree; here you may see
the brown field of upturned earth, the green corn, the golden wheat, the
meadowy pasturage.

It is, indeed, a lovely valley.

In the summer time, those ancient farm-houses, scattered along the bed
of the vale, look out from amid the rustic beauty of embroidered verdure.
Each knoll is magnificent with the foliage of its clustered trees. The wild
vine on the rock, the forest flowers scattered over the ground, the grapes
drooping in clusters from the tall trees, silence and shadow in the bushy
dells, music and verdure on the plain—ah, it is beautiful in summer time,
this valley of the meadow and rivulet. Here indeed, the verdure seems
richer, the skies more serene; here the hills arise with a more undulating
grandeur, than in any other valley throughout the Continent. The Hudson
is sublime; the Susquehanna terrible and beautiful; the Wissahikon lone
and supernatural in its beauty; but the witchery of the Brandywine is at
once quiet, gentle, and full of peace. A sinless virgin with gentle thoughts
gleaming from her mild eye, soft memories flushing over her young cheek,
grace in her gestures and music in her voice—such is the Brandywine
among rivers, such her valley among other valleys!

Far away from the Brandywine, yet within an half hour's ride in the
centre of this Garden of the Lord, arises an old-time church.

Here are no towers to impress the soul with images of gloom; no marble
monuments to glare upon you through the night; here is no majestic dome
swelling up with the sky, with its cross gleaming in the stars. No!

A plain one storied fabric, stands in one corner of a small enclosure of
dark green grass. This enclosure is fenced from the field and highway by
a wall of grey stone; this fabric, built of the same kind of stone, is surmounted
by a plain roof. Such is the Meeting House, such the Graveyard
of the Brandywine.

Yet there are certain dim stains of blood upon those walls; there are
marks of bullet and cannon ball along that roof.

I never shall forget that calm still hour, when my foot pressed the graveyard
sod. It was in the purple glory of an evening in fall. The sky all
azure and gold, arched calmly overhead. Around lay the beautiful sweep
of hill and valley; here an orchard heavy with ripened fruit; yonder a
quaint old farm-house; and far away the summit of the battle hill crowned
with woods, rose up into the evening sky. There was a holy calmness, a
softened sadness on the air.

Standing by that rude wall, I looked upon the mounds of the graveyard,
and examined with a reverential glance, the most minute details of the old
fabric, its walls and doors, windows and roof. As I stood there, a stranger
and a pilgrim on that holy ground, an old man stood by my side, his wrinkled
visage glowing with the last radiance of day. He was grey-haired. His
dress was a plain farmer's costume, and as for his speech, although not a
Quaker, he said “thee” and “thou.”

And while the silence of evening gathered round us, that old man told me
stories of the battle-field that thrilled my blood. He was but a boy on the
battle-day, yet he remembered the face of Washington, the look of La
Fayette, the hearty war-shout of Anthony Wayne. He also had a memory
of a wild dusky figure, that went crashing over the field on a black horse,
with long flakes of dark hair flying over his shoulders. Was this the
Count Pulaski?

Yet there was one legend, falling from the old man's lips, which struck
my soul with its supernatural beauty.

It was not the legend of the maiden, who watching the setting moon, in
the silence of midnight, beheld a dark cloud lowering over the valley, and
thronged with the phantoms of opposing armies.—Nor was it that wild tradition
of Lord Percy, whose grave was at my feet. No! It was a legend
of a Sabbath day, some forty years before the battle, when Peace stood
serene and smiling on these hills, her hands extended in blessings over the
valley. It was a legend which impresses us with the belief that God sends
his warning voice to the sons of men, ere they pollute his earth with the
blood of battle.

More than one hundred years ago—forty years before the battle—the
plain walls of the Quaker Meeting House arose in the calm light of a Sabbath
afternoon, in the first flush of June.

Here in the stillness of that Sabbath hour, the Quaker brethren were assembled,
listening to the earnest words of the preacher, who stood in their
midst.

He stood there, in that rude gallery which supplied the place of pulpit
and altar, his snow-white hair sweeping to his shoulders, while his calm
blue eyes shone with a mild light, as he spake of the Saviour, who hung
upon the cross, for the salvation of all mankind.

Yes, in calm and even tones, touched with a deep pathos, he spoke of
the life of Jesus. While his accents fell round the rude place—as the
breeze of June came softly through the opened windows, as a vision of hill
and valley lay there, mellowing in the light of the afternoon sun—his
hearers were hushed into deep silence

Yon aged Quaker there—whose white hairs had once been pressed by
the hands of William Penn, bent his head upon his staff and listened—yon

bold backwoodsman, standing beside the open window, in his robes of fur,
crossed his arms upon his breast, as the story of the Saviour's life broke
on his ears; nay, even the wild and wandering Indian, won by the tones of
the preacher's voice, dropped his knife and rifle on the graveyard sod, and
standing silent and motionless in yonder door-way, listened with a mute
wonder to that strange story of Jesus.

And there, listening also to the preacher's words, was woman; yes, woman,
with her big eyes dim with tears, her parted lips quivering with suspense,
leaning forward with clasped hands as the name of Jesus trembled
on her ear—yes, clad in her Quaker garb, yet with all her loveliness about
her, there was woman, listening to that story which she is never tired of
hearing: the story of the Saviour and the three beautiful women, who
watched and wept with him, and when all the world forsook him, still came
weeping to his tomb.

Then the old man, in a tremulous voice, pictured the horrors of that
awful day when Jerusalem was deserted by her people; while Calvary
throbbed with the beating of ten thousand hearts—when the world was
dark, while its Saviour suspended to the cross, looked down, even in the
moment of his agony, and beheld—woman watching there!

Dilating in this great theme, that aged man began to predict the reign of
peace over all the world.

“This valley,” he said, elevating his form, and speaking in the low deep
tone of a prophet, “This valley shall never be stained with human
blood!”

His attitude, his voice, that uplifted hand—all were sublime.

As he stood, a silence like the grave, prevailed throughout the Quaker
church.

“Here Peace, driven from the old world shall find a home at last. War
may ravage the old world, Murder may look down upon its battle-fields, and
Persecution light its flames! But here, yea, here in this beautiful valley,
shall the sons of men rear at last the altar to the Unknown God—that God
of Peace, whose face for near two thousand years, has been hidden by the
smoke of slaughter. Here shall be reared the altar of peace; this valley
shall never be stained with human blood!”

His manner was rapt, his tone eloquent, but even as the word “Peace,”
rung from his lips, an awful change came over him. He stood there clasping
the railing of the pulpit with trembling hands—his brow was damp, as
with death-sweat—his blue eye shone with a wild deep light.

The brethren started from their seats in awe and wonder.

“Look!” cried the aged preacher, in gasping tones, “Look! The
vision of God is upon me!”

Then his eye was fixed upon vacancy, and in a hollow voice, as though
some awful scene of human guilt was before his sight, he spoke this strange
prophecy:

“This is a quiet and happy place, my brethren, and the Sabbath sunbeams
shine with a mild glow upon your calm and peaceful faces!

“But the day cometh, yea, the Lord speaks, and I hear! The day
cometh when those mild sunbeams shall shine through yonder windows,
but shine upon heaps of dying, heaps of dead, piled up within these solemn
walls!

“The day cometh when the red waves of battle shall roll over yonder
meadow—when the quiet of these walls shall be broken by the cry of
mortal agony, the groan of the parting soul, the blasphemy of the sinner,
dying the death of murder, blood upon his brow, and despair in his heart!

“Here woman shall weep for her husband, butchered in battle; here the
maiden shall place her hands upon the cold brow of her lover; little children
shall kneel beside the corse of the murdered father!

“The Lord speaks, and I listen!

“The sword shall gleam within these walls; the bullet rain its iron hail
upon this sacred roof; the hoofs of the war-horse stamp their bloody prints
upon this floor!

“And yonder graveyard—do ye behold it? Is it not beautiful, as its
grassy mounds arise in the mild glow of the afternoon sun? The day
cometh when you graveyard shall be choked with ghastly heaps of dead—
broken limbs, torn corses, all crowded together in the graveyard of Peace!
Cold glassy eyeballs—shattered limbs—mangled bodies—crushed skulls—
all glowing in the warm light of the setting sun! For the Lord—for the
Lord of Israel hath spoken it!”

This was the prophecy, preserved in many a home of Brandywine.

Years passed on. The old men who had heard it were with their
fathers. The maidens who had listened to its words of omen, were grave
matrons, surrounded by groups of laughing children. Still the prophecy
lingered in the homes of Brandywine. Still it was whispered by the lips
of the old to the ears of youth.

At last a morning came when there was panic in the very air. The
earth shook to the tread of legions; the roads groaned beneath the weight
of cannon. Suddenly a white cloud overspread the valley, and enveloped
the Quaker temple. Then groans, shouts, curses, were heard. The white
cloud grew darker. It advanced far over the plain, like a banner of colossal
murder. It rolled around yonder hill, it lay darkening over the distant
waters of the Brandywine.

At last, toward evening it cleared away.

The sun shone mildly over the beautiful landscape; the Brandywine rippled
into light from afar.

But the beams of the sun lighted up the cold faces of the dead, with a
ghastly glow.

For in the fields, along the slope of yonder hill, down by the spring under
the wild cherry tree, in the graveyard there, and within the walls of

the meeting house, were nothing but dead men, whose blood drenched the
sod, dyed the waters of the spring and stained the temple floor, while their
souls gathered in one terrible meeting around the Throne of God.

The prophecy had met its fulfilment. The valley of Peace had been
made the Gologotha of slaughter; the house of prayer, the theatre of blood.

III.—THE FEAR OF WAR.

It was in the month of September, in the year of our Lord, 1777, when
the Torch of Revolution had been blazing over the land for two long years,
that the fear of war first startled the homes of Brandywine.

For many days the rumor was vague and shadowy; the fear of war
hovered in the air, with the awful indistinctness of the Panic, that precedes
the Pestilence.

At last, the rumor took form and shape and grew into a Fact.

General Howe, with some 17,000 well armed and disciplined soldiers,
had landed on the peninsula of Maryland and Delaware, above the mouth
of the Susquehanna. His object was the conquest and possession of Philadelphia,
distant some 30 or 40 miles.

To attain this object, he would sweep like a tornado over the luxuriant
plains that lay between his troops and the city. He would write his footsteps
on the soil, in the fierce Alphabet of blood—the blasted field, the
burned farm-house, the bodies of dead men, hewn down in defence of their
hearth sides, these all would track his course.

With this announcement, there came another rumor—a rumor of the
approach of Washington; he came from the direction of Wilmington, with
his ill-clad and half-starved Continentals; he came to face the British Invader,
with his 17,000 hirelings.

It became a fact to all, that the peaceful valley of the Brandywine was
soon to be the chess board, on which a magnificent game of blood and
battle would soon be played for a glorious stake.—The city of Philadelphia,
with its stores of provisions, its munitions of war, its Continental
Congress.

IV.—THE GATHERING OF THE HOSTS.

It was the 9th of September.

The moon was up in the blue heavens. Far along the eastern horizon,
lay a wilderness of clouds, piling their forms of huge grandeur up in deep
azure of night.

The forests of Brandywine arose in dim indistinctness into the soft
moonlight. There were deep shadows upon the meadows, and from many
a farmer's home, the light of the hearth-side lamp poured out upon the
night.

It was night among the hills of Brandywine, when there was a strange

sound echoing and trembling through the deep forests. There was a strange
sound in the forest, along the hills, and through the meadows, and soon
breaking from the thick shades, there came a multitude of dim and spectral
forms.

Yes, breaking into the light of the moon, there came a strange host of
men, clad in military costume, with bayonets gleaming through the air and
banners waving overhead.

They came with the regular movement of military discipline, band after
band, troop after troop, column after column, breaking in stern silence from
the covert of the woods, but the horses of the cavalry looked jaded and
worn, the footsteps of the infantry were clogged and leaden, while the broad
banners of this strange host, waving so proudly in the air, waved and fluttered
in rags. The bullet and the cannon ball had done their work upon
these battle flags!

And over this strange host, over the long columns of troopers and foot-soldiers—over
the baggage wagons bearing the sick, the wounded, nay, over
the very flags that fluttered into light on every side, there rose one broad
and massive banner, on whose blue folds were pictured thirteen stars.

Need I tell you the name of this host? Look down yonder, along the
valley of the Brandywine, and mark those wasted forms, seared by the
bullet and the sword, clad in rags, with rusted musquets in their hands and
dinted swords by their sides—look there and ask the name of this strange
host!

The question is needless. It is the army of George Washington, for
poverty and freedom in those days, walked hand in hand, over rough roads
and bloody battlefields, while sleek faces and broad clothed Loyalty went
pacing merry measures, in some Royal ball room.

And thus, in silence, in poverty, almost in despair, did the army of
Washington take position on the field of Brandywine, on the night of September
9th, 1777.

And over the banner of the Continental host, sat an omen of despair, a
brooding and ghastly Phantom, perched above the flag of freedom, chuckling
with fiend-like glee, as he pointed to the gloomy Past and then—to the
Unknown future.

On the next day, the Tenth of the Month, the hosts of a well-disciplined
army came breaking from the forests, with the merry peal of fife and drum,
with bugle note and clarion sound, and while the morning sun shone brightly
over their well burnished arms, they proceeded to occupy an open space
of ground, amid the shadow of the woods, at a place called Kennet's Square,
some seven miles westward of Chadd's Ford, where Washington had taken
his position.

How grandly they broke from the woods, with the sunbeams, shining on
the gaudy red coat, the silver laced cap, the forest of nodding plumes. How
proudly their red cross banner waved in the free air, as though not ashamed

to toy and wanton in breeze of freedom, after it had floated above the fields
of down-trodden Europe, and looked down upon the plains of ravaged
Hindoostan!

Yes, there in the far East, where the Juggernaut of British Power had
rolled over its ten thousand victims, father and son, mother and babe, all
mingled in red massacre?

Who would have thought, that these finely-built men, with their robust
forms, were other than freemen? That their stout hands could strike
another blow than the blow of a free arm, winged by the impulse of a free
thought?

Who, gazing on this gallant host, with its gleaming swords upraised in
the air, its glittering bayonets shining in the light, who would have thought,
that to supply this gallant host, the gaols of England had been ransacked,
her convict ships emptied? That the dull slaves of a German Prince had
been bought, to swell the number of this chivalric band! That these were
the men who had crossed the wide Atlantic—with what object, pray?

To tame these American peasants, who dared syllable the name of freedom.
To whip these rebel-dogs,—such was the courteous epithet, they
applied to Washington and Wayne—back to their original obscurity. To
desolate the fair plains and pleasant vallies of the New World, to stain the
farmer's home with his own blood, shed in defence of his hearthside.

To crush with the hand of hireling power, the Last Hope of man's freedom,
burning on the last shrine of the desolated world!

Who could have imagined that the majestic looking man, who led this
host of hirelings onward, the brave Howe, with his calm face and mild forehead,
was the Master-Assassin of this tyrant band?

Or that the amiable Cornwallis, who rode at his side, was the fit tool for
such a work of Massacre? Or that the brave and chivalric sons of England's
nobility, who commanded the legions of the invading host, that these
men, gay and young and generous, were but the Executioner's of that Hangman's
Warrant, which converted all America into one vast prison of convicted
felons—each mountain peak a scaffold for the brave, each forest oak
a gibbet for the free?

And here, while a day passed, encamped amid the woods of Kennet's
Square, lay the British army, while the Continental host, spreading along
the eastern hills of Brandywine, awaited their approach without a fear. The
day passed, and then the night, and then the morning came—

Yet ere we mingle in the tumult of that battle morn, we will go to the
American camp, and look upon the heroes in the shadows of the twilight
hour.

V.—THE PREACHER OF BRANDYWINE.

It was the eve of the battle of Brandywine.

I see before me now that pleasant valley, with its green meadow stretching
away into the dim shadows of twilight. The stream, now dashing
around some rugged rock, now spreading in mirror-like calmness; the hills
on either side, magnificent with forest trees; the farm houses, looking out
from the embrace of orchards, golden with the fruitage of the fall; the
twilight sky blushing with the last kiss of day—all are there now, as they
were on the 10th of September, 1777.

But then, whitening over the meadow, arose the snowy tents of the Continential
encampment. Then arms gleamed from these hills, and war-steeds
laved their limbs in yonder stream. Then, at the gentle twilight hour, the
brave men of the army, sword and rifle in hand, gathered around a Preacher,
whose pulpit—a granite rock—uprose from the green hill-side, near Chadd's
Ford.

Look upon him as he stands there, his dark gown floating around his tall
form, his eye burning and his brow flushing with the excitement of the
hour. He is a man in the prime of manhood—with a bold face, tempered
down to an expression of Christian meekness—yet, ever and anon, a warrior
soul looks out from that dark eye, a warrior-shout swells up from that
heaving bosom.

Their memories are with me now; those brave men, who, with God for
their panoply, shared the terrors of Trenton, the carnage of Brandywine,
the crust and cold of Valley Forge; their memories are with me now, and
shall be forevermore. They were brave men, those Preacher-Heroes of
the Revolution. We will remember them in hymns, sung on the cold
winter nights, around the hearthsides of our homes—we will not forget
them in our prayers. We will tell the story to our children: “Children!
there were brave men in the Revolution—brave men, whose hearts panted
beneath a preacher's gown. There were brave men, whose hands grasped
a Bible, a cross, and a sword. Brave men, whose voices were heard amid
the crash of legions, and beside the quivering forms of the dying. Honest
men were they, who forsook pulpit and church to follow George Washington's
army, as it left its bloody footsteps in the winter snow. Honor to
those Preacher-Heroes, who called upon their God in the storm and heard
his answer in the battle-shout!”

We will sing to their memory in hymns of the olden time; on the
Christmas night we will send up a rude anthem—bold in words, stern in
thought, such as they loved in the Revolution—to the praise of these children
of God.

Washington, Wayne, Pulaski, Sullivan, Greene; there all are grouped
around the rock. The last ray of sunset gleams on their uncovered brows.

Far away spread the ranks of the army. Through the silence of the
twilight hour, you may hear that bold voice, speaking out words like these.

Come—we will go to church with the Heroes. Our canopy the sky,
the pulpit, you granite rock, the congregation, a band of brave men, who,
with sword and rifle in hand, await the hour of fight; our Preacher a
warrior-soul, locked up in a sacerdotal robe. Come—we will worship with
Washington and Wayne; we will kneel upon this sod, while the sunset
gleams over ten thousand brows, bared to the beam and breeze.

Do you hear the Preacher's voice swelling through the twilight air?

And first, ere we listen to his voice, we will sing to his memory, this
rugged hymn of the olden time—

Soldiers and Countrymen:—We have met this evening perhaps for the
last time. We have shared the toil of the march, the peril of the fight,
the dismay of the retreat—alike we have endured toil and hunger, the contumely
of the internal foe, the outrage of the foreign oppressor. We have
sat night after night beside the same camp fire, shared the same rough soldier's
fare; we have together heard the roll of the reveille which called us
to duty, or the beat of the tattoo which gave the signal for the hardy sleep
of the soldier, with the earth for his bed, the knapsack for his pillow.

And now, soldiers and brethren, we have met in the peaceful valley, on
the eve of battle, while the sunlight is dying away beyond yonder heights,
the sunlight that to-morrow morn will glimmer on scenes of blood. We
have met, amid the whitening tents of our encampment—in times of terror
and of gloom have we gathered together—God grant it may not be for the
last time.

It is a solemn time. Brethren, does not the awful voice of nature, seem
to echo the sympathies of this hour? The flag of our country, droops
heavily from yonder staff—the breeze has died away along the plain of
Chadd's Ford—the plain that spreads before us glistening in sunlight—the
heights of the Brandywine arise gloomy and grand beyond the waters of
yonder stream, and all nature holds a pause of solemn silence, on the eve
of the bloodshed and strife of the morrow.

“They that take the sword, shall perish by the sword.”

And have they not taken the sword?

Let the desolated plain, the blood-soddened valley, the burned farm-house,
the sacked village, and the ravaged town, answer—let the whitening bones
of the butchered farmer, strewn along the fields of his homestead answer—
let the starving mother, with the babe clinging to her withered breast, that
can afford no sustenance, let her answer, with the death-rattle mingling with
the murmuring tones that mark the last struggle for life—let the dying
mother and her babe answer!

It was but a day past, and our land slept in the light of peace. War was
not here—wrong was not here. Fraud, and woe, and misery, and want,
dwelt not among us. From the eternal solitude of the green woods, arose
the blue smoke of the settler's cabin, and golden fields of corn peered forth

from amid the waste of the wilderness, and the glad music of human voices
awoke the silence of the forest.

Now! God of mercy, behold the change! Under the shadow of a pretext—under
the sanctity of the name of God, invoking the Redeemer to
their aid, do these foreign hirelings slay our people! They throng our
towns, they darken our plains, and now they encompass our posts on the
lonely plain of Chadd's Ford.

“They that take the sword, shall perish by the sword.”

Brethren, think me not unworthy of belief when I tell you that the doom
of the Britisher is near!—Think me not vain when I tell you that beyond
that cloud that now enshrouds us, I see gathering, thick and fast, the darker
cloud, and the blacker storm, of a Divine Retribution!

They may conquer us to-morrow! Might and wrong may prevail, and
we may be driven from this field—but the hour of God's own vengeance
will come!

Aye, if in the vast solitudes of eternal space—if in the heart of the boundless
universe, there throbs the being of an awful God, quick to avenge, and
sure to punish guilt, then will the man George of Brunswick, called King,
feel in his brain and in his heart, the vengeance of the Eternal Jehovah!
A blight will be upon his life—a withered brain, an accursed intellect—a
blight will be upon his children, and on his people. Great God! how
dread the punishment!

A crowded populace, peopling the dense towns where the man of money
thrives, while the laborer starves; want striding among the people in all its
forms of terror; an ignorant and God-defying priesthood, chuckling over
the miseries of millions; a proud and merciless nobility, adding wrong to
wrong, and heaping insult upon robbery and fraud: royalty corrupt to the
very heart; aristocracy rotten to the core; crime and want linked hand in
hand, and tempting men to deeds of woe and death; these are a part of the
doom and retribution that shall come upon the English throne and people.

Soldiers—I look around among your familiar faces with a strange interest!
To-morrow morning we will all go forth to battle—for need I tell you,
that your unworthy minister will go with you, invoking God's aid in the
fight? We will march forth to battle. Need I exhort you to fight the good
fight—to fight for your homesteads, and for your wives and children?

My friends, I might urge you to fight by the galling memories of British
wrong! Walton—I might tell you of your father, butchered in the silence
of midnight, on the plains of Trenton: I might picture his grey hairs, dabbled
in blood; I might ring his death-shriek in your ears.

Shelmire, I might tell you of a mother butchered, and a sister outraged—
the lonely farm-house, the night-assault, the roof in flames, the shouts of
the troopers as they despatched their victims, the cries for mercy, the pleadings
of innocence for pity. I might paint this all again, in the terrible colors
of vivid reality, if I thought your courage needed such wild excitement.

But I know you are strong in the might of the Lord. You will go forth
to battle to-morrow with light hearts and determined spirits, though the
solemn duty, the duty of avenging the dead, may rest heavy on your souls.

And in the hour of battle, when all around is darkness, lit by the lurid
cannon-glare, and the piercing musquet-flash, when the wounded strew the
ground, and the dead litter your path, then remember, soldiers, that God is
with you. The Eternal God fights for you—he rides on the battle-cloud,
he sweeps onward with the march of the hurricane charge.—The Awful
and the Infinite fights for you, and you will triumph.

“They that take the sword, shall perish by the sword.”

You have taken the sword, but not in the spirit of wrong and ravage.
You have taken the sword for your homes, for your wives, for your little
ones.—You have taken the sword for truth, for justice and right; and to
you the promise is, be of good cheer, for your foes have taken the sword,
in defiance of all that man holds dear—in blasphemy of God—they shall
perish by the sword.

And now, brethren and soldiers, I bid you all farewell. Many of us may
fall in the fight of to-morrow—God rest the souls of the fallen—many of us
may live to tell the story of the fight of to-morrow, and in the memory of
all, will ever rest and linger the quiet scene of this autumnal night.

Solemn twilight advances over the valley; the woods on the opposite
heights fling their long shadows over the green of the meadow; around us
are the tents of the Continental host, the half-suppressed bustle of the camp,
the hurried tramp of the soldiers to and fro; now the confusion, and now
the stillness which mark the eve of battle.

When we meet again, may the long shadows of twilight be flung over a
peaceful land.

God in heaven grant it.

Let us pray.

PRAYER OF THE REVOLUTION.

Great Father, we bow before thee. We invoke thy blessing—we deprecate
thy wrath—we return thee thanks for the past—we ask thy aid for
the future. For we are in times of trouble, Oh, Lord! and sore beset by
foes merciless and unpitying: the sword gleams over our land, and the
dust of the soil is dampened by the blood of our neighbors and friends.

Oh! God of mercy, we pray thy blessing on the American arms. Make
the man of our hearts strong in thy wisdom. Bless, we beseech thee, with
renewed life and strength, our hope and Thy instrument, even George
Washington. Shower thy counsels on the Honorable, the Continental
Congress; visit the tents of our hosts; comfort the soldier in his wounds
and afflictions, nerve him for the fight, prepare him for the hour of death.

And in the hour of defeat, oh, God of hosts! do thou be our stay; and
in the hour of triumph, be thou our guide.

Teach us to be merciful. Though the memory of galling wrongs be at
our hearts, knocking for admittance, that they may fill us with desires of
revenge, yet let us, oh, Lord, spare the vanquished, though they never
spared us, in the hour of butchery and bloodshed. And, in the hour of
death, do thou guide us into the abode prepared for the blest; so shall we
return thanks unto thee, through Christ our Redeemer.—God prosper the
Cause—Amen.

As the words of the Preacher die upon the air, you behold those battle
hosts—Washington in their midst, with uncovered brow and bended head—
kneeling like children in the presence of their God.

For he is there, the Lord of Sabaoth, and like a smile from heaven, the
last gleam of the setting sun lights up the Banner of the Stars.

VI.—THE DAWN OF THE FIGHT.

It was the battle day.—The Eleventh of September!

It broke in brightness and beauty, that bloody day: the sky was clear
and serene; the perfume of wild flowers was upon the air, and the blue
mists of autumn hung around the summit of the mound-like hills.

The clear sky arched above, calm as in the bygone days of Halcyon
peace, the wide forests flung their sea of leaves all wavingly into the light—
the Brandywine, with its stream and vallies, smiled in the face of the dawn,
nature was the same as in the ancient time, but man was changed.

The Fear of war had entered the lovely valley. There was dread in all
the homes of Brandywine on that autumnal morn. The Blacksmith wrought
no more at his forge, the farmer leaned wistfully upon the motionless plough,
standing idly in the half-turned furrow. The fear of war had entered the
lovely valley, and in the hearts of its people, there was a dark presentiment
of coming Doom.

Even in the Quaker Meeting house, standing some miles away from
Chadd's Ford, the peaceful Friends assembled for their Spirit Worship, felt
that another Spirit than that which stirred their hearts, would soon claim
bloody adoration in the holy place.

On the summit of a green and undulating hill, not more than half-a-mile
distant from the plain of Chadd's Ford, the eye of the traveller is arrested,
even at this day, by the sight of a giant chesnut tree, marked by a colossal
trunk, while the wide-branching limbs, with their exuberance of deep
green-leaved foliage, tell the story of two hundred years.

Under this massive chesnut tree, on that renowned morn, as the first
glimpse of the dawn broke over the battlefield, there stood a band of men in
military costume, grouped around a tall and majestic figure.

Within sight of this warlike group—a mound-shaped hill and rolling valley
intervening,—lay the plain of Chadd's Ford, with the hastily-erected
tents of the American encampment, whitening along its sward.

There floated the banner of the stars, and there, resting on their well-tried
arms, stood the brave soldiers of the Continental host, casting anxious yet
fearless glances towards the western woods which lined the rivulet, in momentary
expectation of the appearance of the British forces.

And while all was expectation and suspense in the valley below, this
warlike group had gathered under the shade of the ancient chesnut tree—a
hurried Council of war, the Prelude to the blood-stained toil of the coming
battle.

And the man who stood in their midst, towering above them all, like a
Nobleman whose title is from God, let us look well upon him. He converses
there, with a solemn presence about him. Those men, his battle-worn
peers, stand awed and silent. Look at that form, combining the symmetry
of faultless limbs, with a calm majesty of bearing, that shames the
Kings of earth into nothingness—look upon that proud form, which dignifies
that military costume of blue and buff and gold—examine well the
outlines of that face, which you could not forget among ten thousand, that
face, stamped with the silent majesty of a great soul.—

Ask the soldier the name he shouts in the vanguard of battle, ask the dying
patriot the name he murmurs, when his voice is husky with the flow of
suffocating blood, and death is iceing over his heart, and freezing in his
veins—ask the mother for the name she murmurs, when she presses her
babe to her bosom and bids him syllable a prayer for the safety of the father,
far away, amid the ranks of battle, ask History for that name, which shall
dwell evermore in the homes and hearts of men, a sound of blessing and
praise, second only in sanctity to the name of the Blessed Redeemer.—

And that name—need I speak it?

Need I speak it with the boisterous shout or wild hurrah, when it is
spoken in the still small voice of every heart that now throbs at the sound
of the word—the name of George Washington.

And as the sunbeams came bright and golden through the foliage of the
ancient chesnut tree, they shone upon the calm face of the sagacious Greene
—the rugged brow of the fearless Pulaski—the bluff, good-humored visage
of Knox—the frank, manly face of De Kalb—and there with his open brow,
his look of reckless daring, and the full brown eye that never quailed in its
glance, was the favorite son of Pennsylvania, her own hero, dear to her
history in many an oft-told tradition, the theme of a thousand legends, the
praise of historian and bard—Mad Antony Wayne!

Standing beside George Washington, you behold a young soldier—quite
a boy—with a light and well-proportioned form, mingling the outlines of
youthful beauty with the robust vigor of manly strength. His face was
free, daring, chivalric in expression, his blue eye was clear and sparkling in
its glance, and his sand-hued hair fell back in careless locks from a bold and
lofty brow.

And who was he?

Not a soldier in the American camp, from the green mountain boy of the
north, to the daring Ranger of the Santee, but knows his name and has his
story at his tongue's end, familiar as a household word.

And why cast he friends and rank and hereditary right aside, why tearing
himself from the bosom of a young and beautiful wife, did he cross the
Atlantic in peril and in danger, pursued by the storm and surrounded by the
ships of the British fleet—why did he spring so gladly upon the American
shore, why did he fling wealth, rank, life, at the feet of George Washington,
pledging honor and soul in the American cause?

Find your answer in the history of France—find your answer in the
history of her Revolutions—the Revolution of the Reign of Terror, and the
Revolution of the Three days—find your answer in the history of the
world for the last sixty years—in every line, you will behold beaming forth
that high resolve, that generous daring, that nobility of soul, which in life
made his name a blessing, and in death hangs like a glory over his memory
—the name—the memory of La Fayette.

Matter of deep import occupied this hurried council of war. In short
and emphatic words, Washington stated the position of the Continental
army. The main body were encamped near Chadd's Ford—the Pennsylvania
militia under Armstrong two miles below; the Right Wing under Sullivan
two miles above.

This Washington stated was the position of the army. He looked for
the attempt of the enemy to pass the Brandywine, either at Chadd's or
Brinton's Ford.

He had it is true, received information that a portion of the British
would attack him in front, while the main body crossing the Brandywine
some miles above, would turn his right flank and take him by surprise.

But the country—so Washington said in a tone of emphatic scorn—
swarmed with traitors and tories; he could not rely upon this information.

While the chiefs were yet in council, all doubt was solved by the arrival
of a scout, who announced the approach of Kniphausen towards Chadd's
Ford.

An hour passed.

Standing on the embankment, which grim with cannon, frowned above
Chadd's Ford, General Wayne beheld the approach of the Hessians along
the opposite hills.

The word of command rang from his lips, and then the cannon gave
forth their thunder, and the smoke of battle for the first time, darkened the
valley of the Brandywine.

Standing on the embankment, Mad Antony Wayne beheld the valley below
shrouded in smoke, he heard the cries of wounded and the dying!

He saw the brave riflemen, headed by Maxwell and Porterfield, dart
down from the fortified knoll, hurry across the meadow, until the green trees
overlooking the stream, received them in their thick shade.

Then came the fierce and deadly contest, between these riflemen and the
Yager bands of the Hessian army!

Then came the moment, when standing in mid stream, they poured the
rifle-blaze into each other's faces, when they fought foot to foot, and hand
to hand, when the death-groan bubbled up to the water's surface, as the
mangled victim was trodden down into the yellow sands of the rivulet's bed.

Then with a shout of joy, gallant Mad Anthony beheld the Hessians driven
back, while the Banner of the Stars rose gloriously among the clouds of
battle, and then—

But why should I picture the doubt, the anxiety, the awful suspense of
that morning, when Washington looking every moment for the attack of
the British on his front, was yet fearful that they would turn his right wing
and take him by surprise?

Suffice it to say, that after hours of suspense, one o'clock came, and with
that hour came the thunderbolt.

A wounded scout brought intelligence of the approach of the British, in
full force, above the heights of Birmingham Meeting House, toward the
Right Wing of the Continental Army. The wounded scout gave this dread
message, and then bit the dust, a dead man.

Come with me now, come with me through the lanes of Brandywine;
let us emerge from these thick woods, let us look upon the hills around
Birmingham Meeting House.

VII.—THE QUAKER TEMPLE.

It is now two o'clock.

The afternoon sun is shining over a lovely landscape diversified with hills,
now clad with thick and shady forests, now spreading in green pasturages,
now blooming in cultivated farms.

Let us ascend yonder hill, rising far above the plain—you hill to the
north east crowded with a thick forest, and sloping gently to the south, its
bare and grassy bosom melting away into a luxuriant valley.

We ascend this hill, we sit beneath the shade of yonder oak, we look
forth upon the smiling heavens above, the lovely land beneath. For ten
wide miles, that map of beauty lies open to our gaze.

Yonder toward the south arise a ravage of undulating hills, sweeping
toward the east, in plain and meadow—gently ascending in the west until
they terminate in the heights of Brandywine.

And there, far to the west, a glimpse of the Brandywine comes laughing
into light—it is seen but a moment a sheet of rippling water, among green
boughs, and then it is gone!

Gaze upon yonder hill, in the south east. It rises in a gradual ascent.
On its summit thrown forward into the sun by a deep background of woods,
there stands a small one-storied fabric, with steep and shingled roof—with
walls of dark grey stone.

This unpretending structure arises in one corner of a small enclosure,
of dark green grass, varied by gently rising mounds, and bounded by a wall
of dark grey stone.

This fabric of stone rests in the red sunlight quiet as a tomb. Over its
ancient roof, over its moss covered walls, stream the warm sunbeams. And
that solitary tree standing in the centre of the graveyard—for that enclosed
space is a graveyard, although no tombstones whiten over its green mounds
or marble pillars tower into light—that solitary tree quivers in the breeze,
and basks in the afternoon sun.

That is indeed the quiet Quaker graveyard—yon simple fabric, one story
high, rude in architecture, contracted in its form is the peaceful Quaker
meeting house of Birmingham.

It will be a meeting house indeed ere the setting of yon sun, where
Death and blood and woe shall meet; where carnage shall raise his fiery
hymn of cries and groans, where mercy shall enter but to droop and die.

There, in that rude temple, long years ago, was spoken the Prophecy
which now claims its terrible fulfilment.

Now let us look upon the land and sky. Let us look forth from the top
of this hill—it is called Osborne's hill—and survey the glorious land-scape.

The sky is very clear above us. Clear, serene and glassy, A single
cloud hovers in the centre of the sky, a single snow white cloud hovers
there in the deep azure, receiving on its breast, the full warmth of the
Autumnal sun.

It hovers there like a holy dove of peace, sent of God!

Look to the south. Over hill and plain and valley look. Observe those
thin light wreaths of smoke, arising from the green of the forest some two
or three miles to the southwest—how gracefully these spiral columns curl
upward and melt away into the deep azure. Upward and away they wind,
away—away—until they are lost in the heavens.

That snowy smoke is hovering over the plain of Chadd's Ford, where
Washington and Wayne are now awaiting the approach of Kniphausen
across the Brandywine.

Change your view, a mile or two eastward—you behold a cloud of smoke,
hovering over the camp fires of the reserve under General Greene; and
yonder from the hills north of Chadd's Ford, the music of Sullivan's
Division comes bursting over wood and plain.

We will look eastward of the meeting house. A sight as lovely as ever
burst on mortal eye. There are plains glowing with the rich hues of cultivation—plains
divided by fences and dotted with cottages—here a massive
hill, there an ancient farm house, and far beyond peaceful mansions, reposing
in the shadow of twilight woods

Look! Along these plains and fields, the affrighted people of the valley
are fleeing as though some bloodhound tracked their footsteps. They flee

the valley of the Quaker Temple, as though death was in the breeze, desolation
in the sunlight.

Ask you why they flee? Look to the west and to the north west,—
what see you there?

A cloud of dust rises over the woods—it gathers volumes—larger and
wider—darker and blacker—it darkens the western sky—it throws its dusky
shade far over the verdure of the woodlands.

Look again—what see you now?

There is the same cloud of dust, but nothing more meets the vision. Hear
you nothing?

Yes. There is a dull deadened sound like the tramp of war steeds—now
it gathers volume like the distant moan of the ocean-storm—now it murmurs
like the thunder rolling away, amid the ravines of far-off mountains—and
now!

By the soul of Mad Anthony it stirs one's blood!

And now there is a merry peal bursting all along the woods—drum, fife,
bugle, all intermingling—and now arises that ominous sound—the clank of
the sword by the warrior's side, and all the rattle and the clang of arms—
suppressed and dim and distant, but terrible to hear!

Look again. See you nothing?

Yes! Look to the north and to the west. Rank after rank, file after
file, they burst from the woods—banners wave and bayonets gleam! In
one magnificent array of battle, they burst from the woods, column after
column—legion after legion. On their burnished arms—on their waving
plumes shines and flaunts the golden sun.

Look—far through the woods and over the fields! You see nothing but
gleaming bayonets and gaudy red-coats—you behold nothing but bands of
marching men, but troops of mounted soldiers. The fields are red with
British uniforms—and there and there —

Do you see that gorgeous banner—do you see its emblems—do you mark
its colors of blood—do you see —

Oh, Blessed Redeemer, Saviour of the world, is that thy cross? Is that
thy cross waving on that blood-red banner?

Thy Cross, that emblem of peace and truth and mercy, emblem of thy
sufferings, thy death, thy resurrection, emblem of Gethemane and of Calvary!
thy cross waves there, an emblem of HIDEOUS MURDER!

Look! The blood of the Nations drips from that flag! Look, it is
stained with the blood of the Scot, the Irishman, RED Indian, and the dusky
Hindoo—it is stained with the blood of all the earth! The ghosts of millions,
from a thousand battlefields arise and curse that flag forever in the
sight of God! And now—ah, now it comes on to the valley of the Brandywine—it
comes on its work of murder and blood!

And there waving in the sun, that cross so darkly, so foully dishonored,
courts the free air and does not blush for its crimes!

VIII.—WASHINGTON COMES TO BATTLE.

Again turn we to the South. What see you there?

There is the gleam of arms, but it is faint, it is faint and far away!
Hark! Do you hear that sound? Is it thunder, is it the throbbing of
some fierce earthquake, tearing its way through the vitals of the earth?

No! No! The legions are moving.

Washington has scented the prey—doubt is over. Glory to the god
of battles—glory! The Battle is now certain. There, there, hidden by
woods and hills, advances the Banner of the New World—the Labarum of
the Rights of man! There, the boy-general La Fayette gaily smiles and
waves his maiden sword—there, there white-uniformed Pulaski growls his
battle cry—there calm-visaged Greene is calculating chances, and there
Wayne—Mad Anthony Wayne? Hah? What does he now? Listen to
his cannon—they speak out over three miles of forest! That is the welcome
of Mad Anthony to Kniphausen, as he attempts to cross the Brandywine!

And on they come, the American legions—over hill and thro' wood,
a long lonely dell, band after band, battalion crowding on battallion—and now
they move in columns! How the roar of the cataract deepens and swells!
The earth trembles—all nature gives signs of the coming contest.

And over all, over the lonely valley, over the hosts advancing to the fight,
there sits a hideous Phantom, will the head of a fiend, the wings of a vulture!
Yes, yes, there, unseon and unknown, in mid-air, hovers the Fiend
of Carnage! He spreads his dusky wings with joy! He will have a rare
feast ere sundown—a dainty feast! The young, the gallant, the brave are
all to sodden your graveyard with their blood.

Near the foot of this hill, down in the hollow yonder, a clear spring of
cold water shines in the sun. Is it not beautiful, that spring of cold water,
with its border of wild flowers, its sands yellow as gold?

Ere the setting of yonder sun, that spring will be red and rank and foul
with the gore of a thousand hearts!

For it lays in the lap of the valley, and all the blood shed upon yon hill,
will pour into it, in little rills of crimson red!

And on, and on, over hill and valley, on and on advances the Banner of
the New World.

—Glory to the God of battle, how fair that banner looks in the green woods,
how beautiful it breaks on the eye, when toying with the gentle breezes, it
pours its starry rays among the forest trees, or mirrors its beauty in some
quiet brook?

But when it emerges from the green woods, when tossing on the winds
of battle, it seeks the open plain, and its belts of scarlet and snow float

grandly in the air, and its stars flash back the light of the sun—ah, then it
is a glorious sight! Then let this prayer arise from every American heart!

Be thou enthroned above that banner, God of Battles! Guard it with
thy lightnings, fan it with thy breezes, avenge it with thy thunders!

May it ever advance as now, in a cause holy as thy light! May the
hand that would dare pluck one star from its glory, wither—may treason
fall palsied beneath its shade!

But should it ever advance in the cause of a Tyrant, should its folds ever
float over a nation of slaves, then crush Thou that banner in the dust—then
scatter its fragments to space and night, then, then take back to Heaven
thy Stars!

But may it wave on and on—may it advance over this broad continent—
freedom's pillar of cloud by day—freedom's pillar of fire by night—until
there shall be but one nation, from the ice-wilderness of the north, to the
waters of the Southern Sea—a nation of Americans and of brothers!

IX.—THE HOUR OF BATTLE.

It was now four o'clock—the hour of battle.

It is the awful moment, when twenty-two thousand human beings, gazing
in each other's faces from opposite hills, await the signal word of fight.

Along the brow of yonder high hill—Osborne's hill, and down on either
side, into the valley on one hand, the plain on the other, sweeps the formidable
front of the British army, with the glittering line of bayonets above
their heads, another glittering line in their rear, while the arms of the Brigade
in Reserve glimmer still farther back, among the woods on the hill-top—and
yet farther on, a Regiment of stout Englishers await the bidding
of their masters, to advance or retire, as the fate of the day may decree.

There are long lines of glittering cannon pointed toward the opposite
hills, there are infantry, artillery and cavalry, a band of twelve thousand
men, all waiting for the signal word of fight.

On that clear space of green hill-side, between the Regiment of horse and
the Brigade in Reserve, General Howe and Lord Cornwallis rein their
steeds, encircled by the chieftains of the British host.

And from the trees along the opposite hills, pour the hurried bands of the
Continental Army, at the very moment that the British General is about to
give the word of battle, which will send an hundred Souls to Eternity!

There comes the Right Division of the army under the brave Sullivan,
the unfortunate Stephens, the gallant Stirling. They take their position in
hurry and disorder. They file along the hills in their coats of blue and
buff, they throw their rifle-bands into the Meeting House. With stout
hands, with firm hearts, this division of the Continental host confront the
formidable army, whose array flashes from yonder hill.

There mounted on his grey war-steed, Sir William Howe looked for a

moment over the ranks of his army, over their forest of swords and bayonets
and banners, and then slowly unsheathing his sword, he waved it in the
light.

That was the signal of battle.

An hundred bugles hailed that sign with their maddening peals, an hundred
drums rolled forth their deafening thunder—Hark! The hill quivers
as though an earthquake shook its grassy bosom!

Along the British line streams the blaze of musquetry, the air is filled
with the roar of cannon!

Look down into the valley below! There all is shrouded in snow-white
smoke—snow-white that heaves upward in those vast and rolling folds.

A moment passes!—

That cloud is swept aside by a breeze from the American army. That
breeze bears the groans of dying men to the very ears of Howe!

That parting cloud lays bare the awful panorama of death—wounded
men falling to the earth—death-stricken soldiers leaping in the air, with the
blood streaming from their shattered limbs.

Where solid ranks but a moment stood, now are heaps of ghastly dead!

Another moment passes, and the voice of Sullivan is heard along the
Continental line. From the southern heights there is a deafening report,
and then a blaze of flame bursts over the British ranks!

The piercing musquet shot, the sharp crack of the rifle, the roar of the
cannon, these all went up to heaven, and then all was wrapt in smoke on
the southern hills.

Then the white pall was lifted once again! Hah! The Quaker Meeting
House has become a fortress! From every window, nook and cranny
peals the rifle-blaze, the death-shot!

And then a thousand cries and groans commingling in one infernal chorus,
go shrieking up to yon sky of azure, that smiles in mockery of this scene
of murder!—And yonder, far in the west, the waters of the Brandywine
still laugh into light for a moment, and then roll calmly on.

Another moment passes! That loud shout yelling above the chorus of
death—what means it? The order rings along the British line—Charge,
charge for King George!

The Continental columns give back the shout with redoubled echo,
Charge, charge in the Name of God, in the name of Washington!

And then while the smoke gathers like a black vault overhead—like a
black vault built by demon hands, sweeping from either side, at the top of
their horses speed the troopers of the armies meet, sword to sword, with
banners mingling and with bugle pealing, fighting for life they meet. There
is a crash, a fierce recoil, and another charge!

Now the Red Cross of St. George, and the Starry Banner of the New
World, mingle their folds together, tossing and plunging to the impulse of
the battle-breeze.

Hurrah! The fever of blood is in its worst and wildest delirium! Now
are human faces trampled deep into the blood-drenched sod, now are glazing
eyes torn out by bayonet thrusts, now are quivering hearts rent from the
still-living bodies of the foemen!

Hurrah!

How gallantly the Continentals meet the brunt of strife. Rushing forward
on horse and foot, under that Starry Banner, they seek the British
foemen, they pour the death-hail into their ranks, they throttle them with
their weaponless hands.

X.—THE POETRY OF BATTLE.

Talk not to me of the Poetry of Love, or the Sublimity of nature in repose,
or the divine beauty of Religion!

Here is poetry, sublimity, religion! Here are twenty thousand men
tearing each other's limbs to fragments, putting out eyes, crushing skulls,
rending hearts and trampling the faces of the dying, deeper down—
Poetry!

Here are horses running wild, their saddles riderless, their nostrils
streaming blood, here are wounded men gnashing their teeth as they endeavor
to crawl from beneath the horses' feet, here are a thousand little
pools of blood, filling the hollows which the hoofs have made, or coursing
down the ruts of the cannon wheels—Sublimity!

Here are twelve thousand British hirelings, seeking the throats of you
small band of freemen, and hewing them down in gory murder, because,
oh yes, because they will not pay tax to a good-humored Idiot, who even
now, sits in his royal halls of Windsor, three thousand miles away, with
his vacant eye and hanging lip, catching flies upon the wall, or picking
threads from his royal robe—yes, yes, there he sits, crouching among the
folds of gorgeous tapestry, this Master Assassin, while his trained murderers
advance upon the hills of Brandywine—there sits the King by right
divine, the Head of the Church, the British Pope!—Religion!

How do you like this Poetry, this Sublimity, this Religion of George
the Third?—

And now, when you have taken one long look at the Idiot-King, sitting
yonder in his royal halls of Windsor, look there through the clouds of battle,
and behold that warrior-form, mounted on a steed of iron-grey!

That warrior-form rising above the ranks of battle, clad in the uniform
of blue and buff and gold—that warrior-form, with the calm blue eye
kindling with such fire, with the broad chest heaving with such emotion—
with the stout arm lifting the sword on high, pointing the way to the field
of death—that form looming there in such grandeur, through the intervals
of battle-smoke—

Is it the form of some awful spirit, sent from on high to guide the course
of the fight? Is it the form of an earthly King?

Tell me the name of that warrior-form?

Have your answer in the battle-cry, which swells from a thousand hearts
—“Washington?”

XI.—LORD PERCY'S DREAM.

It was at this moment—the darkest of the conflict—that Lord Cornwallis,
surveying the tide of a battle, turned to a young officer who had been detained
for a moment by his side.

“Colonel Percy—” said he—” The rebels have entrenched themselves
in yonder graveyard. Would that I had a brave man, who would dare to
plant the royal standard on those dark grey walls!”

“I will take it,” said the young officer, as he gave his golden-hued steed
the spur, “I will take it, or die!”

And now as with his manly form, attired in a uniform of dark green
velvet, he speeds down the hill, followed by a band of thirty bold troopers,
his long dark hair flying back from his pale face; let me tell you the strange
story of his life.

Tradition relates, that accompanying the British host, urged by some
wild spirit of adventure, was a young and gallant spirit—Lord Percy, a near
connection of the proud Duke of Northumberland.

He was young, gallant, handsome, but since the landing of the troops on
the Chesapeake, his gay companions had often noted a frown of dark
thought shadowing his features, a sudden gloom working over his pale face,
and a wild unearthly glare in his full dark eye.

The cause had been asked, but no answer given. Again and again, yet
still no answer.

At last, Lord Cornwallis asked young Percy what melancholy feelings
were these, which darkened his features with such a strange gloom. With
the manner of a fated man, the young lord gave his answer.

(This scene occurred not ten minutes before the battle, when Cornwallis
was urging his way thro' the thick wood, that clothed the summit of Osborne's
Hill.)

He had left the dissipations of the English Court, for the wilds of the
New World, at the request of the aged Earl, his father. That earl, when a
young man, had wandered in the wilds of South Carolina—he had tricked
a beautiful girl, in whose dark cheek there glowed the blood of an Indian
King—he had tricked this beautiful girl into a sham marriage, and then deserted
her, for his noble bride in England.

And now, after long years had passed, this aged Man, this proud Earl,
had hurried his legitimate son to the wilds of America, with the charge to

seek out the illegitimate child of the Indian girl of Carolina, and place a
pacquet in his hands.

This, in plain words, was the object of Lord Percy's journey to America.

And as to the gloom on his brow, the deathly light in his eye? This
was the answer which Percy gave to Cornwallis —

A presentiment of sudden death—he said—was on his mind. It had
haunted his brain, from the very first moment he had trodden the American
shores. It had crept like a Phantom beside him, in broad daylight, it had
brooded with images of horror, over the calm hours devoted to sleep. It
was ever with him, beside his bed and at his board, in camp and bouviac,
that dark presentiment of sudden death.

Whence came this presentiment? was the query of Lord Cornwallis.

“One night when crossing the Atlantic, one night when the storm was
abroad and the thunderbolt came crashing down the mainmast, then, my
Lord, then I had a dream! In that dream I beheld a lovely valley, a rustic
fabric, too rude for a lordly church and a quiet graveyard, without a tomb-stone
or marble pillar! And over that valley, and around that graveyard,
the tide of battle raged, for it was a battle fierce and bloody!

“And therein that graveyard, I beheld a form thrown over a grassy mound,
with the life-blood welling from the death-wound near the heart! That
form was mine! Yes, yes, I saw the eyes glaring upon the blue heavens,
with the glassy stare of death! That form was mine!”

“Pshaw! This is mere folly,” exclaimed Lord Cornwallis, as he endeavored
to shake off the impression which the young Lord's earnest words
had produced—“This is but a vain fancy—”

As he spoke they emerged from the thick wood, they reined their horses
upon the summit of Osborne's hill—the valley of the meeting-house lay
at their feet.

At this moment Lord Percy raised his face—at a glance he beheld the
glorious landscape—a horrible agony distorted his countenance—

“My dream! My dream!” he shrieked, rising in his stirrups, and
spreading forth his hands.

And then with straining eyes he looked over the landscape.

That single small white cloud hovered there in the blue heavens! It
hovered in the blue sky right over the Meeting House! Hill and plain and
valley lay basking in the sun. Afar were seen pleasant farm houses embosomed
in trees, delightful strips of green meadow, and then came the blue
distance where earth and sky melted into ONE!

But not on the distance looked Lord Percy—not on the blue sky, or glad
fields, or luxuriant orchards.

His straining eye saw but the valley at his feet, the Quaker temple, the
quiet graveyard!

“My dream! My dream!” he shrieked—“This is the valley of my
dream—and yonder is the graveyard! I am fated to die upon this field!”

No words could shake this belief. Seeking his brother officers, Lord
Percy bestowed some token of remembrance on each of them, gave his
dearest friend a last word of farewell for his Betrothed, now far away in the
lofty halls of a ducal palace, and then, with a pale cheek and flashing eye,
rode forth to battle.

And now look at him, as with his dark hair waving on the wind, he
nears the graveyard wall.

He raised his form in the stirrups, he cast one flashing glance over his
trooper band, robed in forest green, and then his eye was fixed upon the
graveyard.

All was silent there! Not a shot from the windows—not a rifle-blaze
from the dark grey wall. There was that dark grey wall rising some thirty
paces distant—there were the green mounds, softened by the rays of the
sun, pouring from that parted cloud, and there back in the graveyard, under
the shelter of trees, there is ranged a warrior-band, clad like his own in
forest green, and with the form of a proud chieftain, mounted on a gold-hued
steed, towering in their midst.

That chieftain was Captain Waldemar, a brave partizan leader from the
wild hills of the Santee. His bronzed cheek, his long dark hair, his well-proportioned
form, his keen dark eye, all mark his relationship to the
Indian girl of Carolina.

Little does Lord Percy think, as he rides madly toward that graveyard,
that there that half-Indian brother is waiting for him, with bullet and
sword.

On with the impulse of an avalanche sweep the British troopers—behind
them follow the infantry with fixed bayonets—before them is nothing but
the peaceful graveyard sward.

They reach the wall, their horses are rearing for the leap—

When lo! What means this miracle?

Starting from the very earth, a long line of bold backwoodsmen start up
from behind the wall, their rifles poised at the shoulder, and that aim of
death securely taken!

A sheet of fire gleamed over the graveyard wall pouring full into the faces
of the British soldiers—clouds of pale blue smoke went rolling up to heaven,
and as they took their way aloft, this horrid sight was seen.

Where thirty bold troopers, but a moment ago rushed forward, breasting
the graveyard wall, now were seen, thirty mad war-horses, rearing wildly
aloft, and trampling their riders' faces in the dust.

Lord Percy was left alone with the British Banner in his hand, his
horse's hoofs upon the wall!

“On Britons, on,” shrieked Percy, turning in wild haste to the advancing
columns of infantry—“On and revenge your comrades!”

At the same moment, from the farther extreme of the graveyard, was
heard the deep-toned shout—

“Riders of Santee upon these British robbers! Upon these British robbers,
who redden our soil with the blood of its children!”

And then the British infantry, and then other bands of British troopers
came pouring over that fatal wall, upon the graveyard sward!

Then crashing on—one fierce bolt of battle—that band of Rangers burst
upon the British bayonets; there was crossing of swords and waving of
banners—steeds mingled with steeds—green uniforms with green uniforms,
and scarlet with green—now right now left—now backward now forward,
whirled the fiery whirlpool of that fight—and there, seen clearly and distinctly
amid the bloody turmoil of that battle, two forms clad in green and
gold, mounted on golden-hued steeds, with a gallant band of sworn brothers
all around them, fought their way to each other's hearts!

Percy and the dark-visaged Partizan Waldemar, met in battle!

Unknown to each other, the Brothers crossed their swords—the child of
the proud English Countess, and the son of the wild Indian girl! Both
mounted on golden-hued steeds, both attired in dark green velvet, that
strange resemblance of brotherhood stamped on each face, they met in
deadly combat!

Say was not this Fate?

Their swords crossed rose and fell—there was a rapid sound of clashing
steel, and then with his brother's sword driven through his heart, Lord
Percy fell!

The Indian girl was avenged.

A wild whirl of the fight separated Captain Waldemar from his brother,
but when the battle was past, in the deep silence of that night, which
brooded over the battle-slain, this son of the Indian woman sought out the
corse of the English Lord from the heaps of dead. Bending slowly down
by the light of the moon, he perused the pale face of Lord Percy; he tore
the pacquet from his bosom, he read the testimonial of his mother's marriage,
he read the offers of favor and patronage, from the old Earl to the Indian
woman's son.

Then he knew that he held the body of a dead brother in his arms.
Then he tore those offers of favor into rags, but placed the marriage testimonial
close to his heart.

Then he—that half Indian man, in whose veins flowed the blood of a
long line of Indian kings mingling with the royal blood of England, he with
tears in his dark eyes, scooped a grave for his brother, and buried him
there.

And that fair young maiden gazing from the window of that ducal palace,
far away yonder in the English Isle, that fair young maiden, whose long
hair sweeps her rose-bud cheeks with locks of midnight darkness—look
how her deep dark eyes are fixed upon the western sky?

She awaits the return of her betrothed, the gallant Lord Percy. She
gazes to the west, and counts the hours that will elapse ere his coming!

Ah she will count the weeks and the months and the years, and yet he will
not come.

He will not come, for deep under the blood-drenched earth of Brandywine,
he the young, the gallant, the brave, rots and moulders into dust.

And she shall wait there many a weary hour, while her dark eye, dilating
with expectation, is fixed upon that western sky! Ah that eye shall
grow dim, that cheek will pale, and yet her betrothed will not come!

Ah while her eye gleams, while her heart throbs as if to greet his coming
footstep, the graveworm is feasting upon his manly brow!

And there, in that lonely graveyard of Brandy wine, without a stone to
mark his last resting place, unhonored and unwept, the gallant Percy moulders
into dust!

XII.—THE LAST HOUR.

Meanwhile the terror of the fight darkened around the Quaker Temple.

There is a moment of blood and horror. They fight each man of them
as though the issue of the field depended upon his separate hand and blow
—but in vain, in vain!

The enemy swarm from the opposite hills, they rush forward in mighty
columns superior in force, superior in arms to the brave Continential Yeomen.

Again they advance to the charge—again they breast the foe—they drive
him back—they leap upon his bayonets—they turn the tide of fight by one
gallant effort—but now! They waver, they fall back, Sullivan beholds his
Right Wing in confusion—but why need I pursue the dark history further?

Why need I tell how Washington came hurrying on to the rescue of his
army, with the reserve under General Greene? How all his efforts of
superhuman courage were in vain? How Pulaski thundered into the British
ranks, and with his white-coated troopers at his back, hewed a way for
himself thro' that fiery battle, leaving piles of dead men on either side?

Suffice it to say, that overpowered by the superior force of the enemy,
the continental army retreated toward the south. Suffice it to say, that the
British bought the mere possession of the field, with a good round treasure
of men and blood—That if Washington could not conquer the enemy, he
at all events saved his army and crippled his foe.

And there, as the American army swept toward Chester, there rushing
upon the very bayonets of the pursuing enemy was that gallant boy of
nineteen, imploring the disheartened fugitives to make one effort more, to
strike yet another blow!

It was in vain! While his warm arm was yet raised on high, while his
voice yet arose in the shout for Washington and freedom, La Fayette was
wounded near the ancle by a musket ball. The blood of old France
flowed warmly in the veins of that gallant boy!

That glorious French blood of Charlemagne, of Conde, of Navarre,

that glorious French blood, which in aftertime, making one wide channel
of the whole earth, flowed on in a mighty river—on to triumph, bearing
Napoleon on its gory waves!

Ah there was warm and generous blood flowing in the veins of that gallant
boy of France!

Oh tell me you, who are always ready with the sneer, when a young
man tries to do some great deed, tries with a sincere heart and steady hand
to carve himself a name upon the battlements of time—oh tell me, have you
no sneer for this boy at Brandywine? This boy La Fayette, who left the
repose of that young wife's bosom, to fight the battles of a strange people
in a far land?

There was a General Howe, my friends, who invited some ladies to
take supper one night in Philadelphia, with this boy La Fayette, and then
sent his troops out to Barren Hill, to trap him and bring him in,—but my
friends, that night the ladies ate their viands cold, for Sir William failed to
—“Catch the boy.”

There was a Lord Cornwallis, who having encircled the French Marquis
with his troops, there in the forests of Virginia, wrote boastingly home
to his king, that he might soon expect a raree-show, for he was determined
to “Catch this Boy,” and send him home to London. The king had
his raree-show, but it was the news of my Lord Cornwallis's surrender at
Yorktown, but as for La Fayette, he never saw him, for my Lord Cornwallis
failed to “Catch the Boy.”

XIII.—PULASKI.

It was at the battle of Brandywine that Count Pulaski appeared in all
his glory.

As he rode, charging there, into the thickest of the battle, he was a warrior
to look upon but once, and never forget.

Mounted on a large black horse, whose strength and beauty of shape
made you forget the plainness of his caparison, Pulaski himself, with a form
six feet in height, massive chest and limbs of iron, was attired in a white
uniform, that was seen from afar, relieved by the black clouds of battle.
His face, grim with the scars of Poland, was the face of a man who had
seen much trouble, endured much wrong. It was stamped with an expression
of abiding melancholy. Bronzed in hue, lighted by large dark eyes,
with the lip darkened by a thick moustache, his throat and chin were covered
with a heavy beard, while his hair fell in raven masses, from beneath
his trooper's cap, shielded with a ridge of glittering steel. His hair and
beard were of the same hue.

The sword that hung by his side, fashioned of tempered steel, with a hilt
of iron, was one that a warrior alone could lift.

It was in this array he rode to battle, followed by a band of three hundred

men, whose faces, burnt with the scorching of a tropical sun, or hardened
by northern snows, bore the scars of many a battle. They were
mostly Europeans; some Germans, some Polanders, some deserters from
the British army. These were the men to fight. To be taken by the
British would be death, and death on the gibbet; therefore, they fought
their best and fought to the last gasp, rather than mutter a word about
“quarter.”

When they charged it was as one man, their three hundred swords flashing
over their heads, against the clouds of battle. They came down upon
the enemy in terrible silence, without a word spoken, not even a whisper.
You could hear the tramp of their steeds, you could hear the rattling of their
scabbards, but that was all.

Yet when they closed with the British, you could hear a noise like the
echo of a hundred hammers, beating the hot iron on the anvil. You could
see Pulaski himself, riding yonder in his white uniform, his black steed
rearing aloft, as turning his head over his shoulder he spoke to his men:

“Forwarts, Brudern, forwarts!”

It was but broken German, yet they understood it, those three hundred
men of sunburnt face, wounds and gashes. With one burst they crashed
upon the enemy. For a few moments they used their swords, and then
the ground was covered with dead, while the living enemy scattered in panic
before their path.

It was on this battle-day of Brandywine that the Count was in his glory.
He understood but little English, so he spake what he had to say with the
edge of his sword. It was a severe Lexicon, but the British soon learned
to read it, and to know it, and fear it. All over the field, from yonder
Quaker meeting-house, away to the top of Osborne's Hill, the soldiers of
the enemy saw Pulaski come, and learned to know his name by heart.

That white uniform, that bronzed visage, that black horse with burning
eye and quivering nostrils, they knew the warrior well; they trembled
when they heard him say:

“Forwarts, Brüdern, forwarts!”

It was in the Retreat of Brandywine, that the Polander was most terrible.
It was when the men of Sullivan—badly armed, poorly fed, shabbily clad—
gave way, step by step, before the overwhelming discipline of the British
host, that Pulaski looked like a battle-fiend, mounted on his demon-steed.

His cap had fallen from his brow. His bared head shone in an occasional
sunbeam, or grew crimson with a flash from the cannon or rifle. His
white uniform was rent and stained; in fact, from head to foot, he was
covered with dust and blood.

Still his right arm was free—still it rose there, executing a British hireling
when it fell—still his voice was heard, hoarse and husky, but strong in
its every tone—“Forwarts, Brüdern!”

He beheld the division of Sullivan retreating from the field; he saw the

British yonder, stripping their coats from their backs in the madness of
pursuit. He looked to the South, for Washington, who, with the reserve,
under Greene, was hurrying to the rescue, but the American Chief was
not in view.

Then Pulaski was convulsed with rage.

He rode madly upon the bayonets of the pursuing British, his sword
gathering victim after victim; even there, in front of their whole army, he
flung his steed across the path of the retreating Americans, he besought
them, in broken English, to turn, to make one more effort; he shouted in
hoarse tones that the day was not yet lost!

They did not understand his words, but the tones in which he spoke
thrilled their blood.

That picture, too, standing out from the clouds of battle—a warrior, convulsed
with passion, covered with blood, leaning over the neck of his steed,
while his eyes seemed turned to fire, and the muscles of his bronzed face
writhed like serpents—that picture, I say, filled many a heart with new
courage, nerved many a wounded arm for the fight again.

Those retreating men turned, they faced the enemy again—like greyhounds
at bay before the wolf—they sprang upon the necks of the foe, and
bore them down by one desperate charge.

It was at this moment that Washington came rushing on once more to
the battle.

Those people know but little of the American General who call him the
American Fabius, that is, a general compounded of prudence and caution,
with but a spark of enterprise. American Fabius! When you will show
me that the Roman Fabius had a heart of fire, nerves of steel, a soul that
hungered for the charge, an enterprise that rushed from the wilds like the
Skippack, upon an army like the British at Germantown, or started from
ice and snow, like that which lay across the Delaware, upon hordes like
those of the Hessians, at Trenton—then I will lower Washington down
into Fabius. This comparison of our heroes, with the barbarian demi-gods
of Rome, only illustrates the poverty of the mind that makes it.

Compare Brutus, the ASSASSIN of his friend, with Washington, the Saviour
of the People! Cicero, the opponent of Cataline, with Henry, the
Champion of a Continent! What beggary of thought! Let us learn to
be a little independent, to know our great men, as they were, not by comparison
wiih the barbarian heroes of old Rome.

Let us learn that Washington was no negative thing, but all chivalry and
genius.

It was in the battle of Brandywine that this truth was made plain. He
came rushing on to battle. He beheld his men hewn down by the British;
he heard them shriek his name, and regardless of his personal safety, he
rushed to join them.

Yes, it was in the dread havoc of that retreat that Washington, rushing

forward into the very centre of the melee, was entangled in the enemy's
troops, on the top of a high hill, south-west of the Meeting House, while
Pulaski was sweeping on with his grim smile, to have one more bout with
the eager red coats.

Washington was in terrible danger—his troops were rushing to the south
—the British troopers came sweeping up the hill and around him—while
Pulaski, on a hill some hundred yards distant, was scattering a parting
blessing among the hordes of Hanover.

It was a glorious prize, this Mister Washington, in the heart of the
British army.

Suddenly the Polander turned—his eye caught the sight of the iron grey
and his rider. He turned to his troopers; his whiskered lip wreathed with
a grim smile—he waved his sword—he pointed to the iron grey and its
rider.

There was but one moment:

With one impulse that iron band wheeled their war horses, and then a
dark body, solid and compact was speeding over the valley like a thunder-bolt
torn from the earth—three hundred swords rose glittering in a faint
glimpse of sunlight—and in front of the avalanche, with his form raised to
its full height, a dark frown on his brow, a fierce smile on his lip, rode
Pulaski. Like a spirit roused into life by the thunderbolt, he rode—his
eyes were fixed upon the iron grey and its rider—his band had but one
look, one will, one shout for—Washington!

The British troops had encircled the American leader—already they felt
secure of their prey—already the head of that traitor, Washington, seemed
to yawn above the gates of London.

But that trembling of the earth in the valley, yonder. What means it?

That terrible beating of hoofs, what does it portend?

That ominous silence—and now that shout—not of words nor of names,
but that half yell, half hurrah, which shrieks from the Iron Men, as they
scent their prey? What means it all?

Pulaski is on our track! The terror of the British army is in our wake!

And on he came—he and his gallant band. A moment and he had swept
over the Britishers—crushed—mangled, dead and dying they strewed the
green sod—he had passed over the hill, he had passed the form of Washington.

Another moment! And the iron band had wheeled—back in the same
career of death they came! Routed, defeated, crushed, the red coats flee
from the hill, while the iron band sweep round the form of George Washington—they
encircle him with their forms of oak, their swords of steel—
the shout of his name shrieks through the air, and away to the American
host they bear him in all a soldier's battle joy.

It was at Savannah, that night came down upon Pulaski.

Yes, I see him now, under the gloom of night, riding forward towards
yonder ramparts, his black steed rearing aloft, while two hundred of his
iron men follow at his back.

Right on, neither looking to right or left, he rides, his eye fixed upon the
cannon of the British, his sword gleaming over his head.

For the last time, they heard that war cry —

“Forwarts, Brudern, forwarts!”

Then they saw that black horse plunging forward, his forefeet resting on
the cannon of the enemy, while his warrior-rider arose in all the pride of
his form, his face bathed in a flush of red light.

That flash once gone, they saw Pulaski no more. But they found him,
yes, beneath the enemy's cannon, crushed by the same gun that killed his
steed—yes, they found them, the horse and rider, resting together in death,
that noble face glaring in the midnight sky with glassy eyes.

So in his glory he died. He died while America and Poland were yet
in chains. He died, in the stout hope, that both would one day, be free.
With regard to America, his hope has been fulfilled, but Poland —

Tell me, shall not the day come, when yonder monument—erected by
those warm Southern hearts, near Savannah—will yield up its dead?

For Poland will be free at last, as sure as God is just, as sure as he governs
the Universe. Then, when re-created Poland rears her Eagle aloft
again, among the banners of nations, will her children come to Savannah,
to gather up the ashes of their hero, and bear him home, with the chaunt
of priests, with the thunder of cannon, with the tears of millions, even as
repentant France bore home her own Napoleon.

Yes, the day is coming, when Kosciusko and Pulaski will sleep side by
side, beneath the soil of Re-created Poland.

XIV.—WASHINGTON'S LAST CHARGE AT BRANDYWINE.

They tell us that he was cold, calm, passionless; a heart of ice and a
face of marble.

Such is the impression which certain men, claiming the title of Philosopher
and Historian, have scattered to the world, concerning our own Washington.

They compare him with the great man of France. Yes, they say Napoleon
was a man of genius, but Washington a man of talent. Napoleon was
all fire, energy, sublimity; Washington was a very good man, it is true, but
cold, calculating, common-place.

While they tell the mass of the people that Washington was a saint,
nay, almost a demi-god, they draw a curtain over his heart, they hide from
us, under piles of big words and empty phrases, Washington the Man.

You may take the demi-god if you like, and vapor away whole volumes

of verbose admiration on a shadow, but for my part, give me Washington
the Man.

He was a Man. The blood that flowed in his veins, was no Greenland
current of half-melted ice, but the warm blood of the South; fiery as its sun,
impetuous as its rivers. His was the undying love for a friend; his, the
unfathomable scorn for a mean enemy; his, the inexpressible indignation
when the spirit of party—that crawling thing, half-snake, half-ape—began
to bite his heel.

I like to look at Washington the Man. Nay, even at Washington the
Boy, dressed in plain backwoodsman's shirt and moccasins, struggling for
his life, yonder on the raft, tossed to and fro by the waves and ice of
Alleghany river.

Or at Washington the young General, sitting in his camp at Cambridge,
the map of the New World before him, as sword by his side, and pen in
hand, he planned the conquest of the Continent.

Or yet again, I love to behold Washington the Despised Rebel, sitting so
calm and serene, among those wintry hills of Valley Forge, while the
Pestilence thins his camp and Treason plots its schemes for his ruin in
Congress. Yes, I love to look upon him, even as he receives the letter announcing
the Cabal, which has been formed by dishonest and ambitious
men, for his destruction; I see the scorn flush his cheek and fire his eye;
I hear the words of indignation ring from his lips; as I look, his broad
chest heaves, his clenched hand grasps his sword.

And yet in a moment, he is calm again; he has subdued his feelings of
indignation, not because they are unjust, but from the sublime reason that
the Cause in which he is engaged is too high, too holy, for any impulse of
personal vengeance.

Here is the great key to Washington's heart and character. He was a
Man of strong passions and warm blood, yet he crushed these passions,
and subdued this fiery blood, in order to accomplish the Deliverance of his
Country. He fervently believed that he was called by God to Deliver the
New World.—This belief was in fact, the atmosphere of all his actions;
it moulded the entire man anew, and prepared the Virginia Planter, the Provincial
Colonel, for the great work of a Deliverer.

They tell me that he was never known to smile. And yet there never
breathed a man, whose heart bounded more freely at the song and jest, than
his. But there was a cause for the deep solemnity, which veiled his face
when he appeared in public. The image of his Country bleeding on her
thousand hills, under the footsteps of British Tyranny, was ever before
him, calling as with the voice of a ghost, upon him, her Champion and
Saviour.

After the Revolution, there were as substantial and important reasons for
his solemnity of look and presence as before.

The country which he had redeemed, was torn by the fangs of party-spirit.

The wolves of faction, who had lain somewhat stilled and subdued
during the war, came out from their dens as soon as the day broke over
the long night, and howled their watch-words in the ear of Washington and
around the Ark of the Country's Freedom.

How to crush these creatures, without endangering that Ark, or embroiling
the land in a civil war—this was the thought that always shadowed,
with deep solemnity, sometimes gloom, the countenance of Washington, the
President.

It is a bitter thought to me that the heart of this great, this good, this
warm-hearted man, was as much torn and pained during his Presidential
career, by the war of opposing factions, as it was in the Revolution by his
contest with a British foe.

To him there never came an hour of rest. His anxiety for his country
followed him to Mount Vernon, and ended only with his last breath. Too
pure for a party-man, soaring far above the atmosphere of faction, he only
held one name, one party dear to his heart—the name and party of the
American People.

In order to reveal a new page in this man's character and history, let us
look upon him in the hour of battle and defeat. Let us pierce the battlemists
of Brandywine, and gaze upon him at the head of his legions.

“Pulaski!”

The noble countenance of the brave Pole stood out in strong relief from
the white smoke of battle. That massive brow, surmounted by the dark
fur cap and darker plume, the aquiline nose, the lip concealed by a thick
moustache, and the full square chin, the long black hair, sweeping to the
shoulders—this marked profile was drawn in bold relief, upon the curtain
of the battle-smoke. An expression of deep sadness stamped the face of
the hero.

“I was thinking of Poland!” he exclaimed, in broken accents, as he
heard his name pronounced by Washington.

“Yes,” said Washington, with a deep solemnity of tone, “Poland has
many wrongs to avenge! But God lives in Heaven, yonder”—he pointed
upward with his sword—“and he will right the innocent at last!”

“He will!” echoed the Pole, as his gleaming eye reaching beyond time
and space seemed to behold this glorious spectacle—Poland free, the cross
shining serenely over her age-worn shrines, the light of peace glowing in
her million homes.

“Pulaski,” said Washington, “look yonder!”

The Polander followed with his eye the gesture of Washington's sword.
Gazing down the hill, he beheld the last hope of the Continental Army embosomed
among British bayonets; he saw the wreck of Sullivan's right
wing yielding slowly before the invader, yet fighting for every inch of
ground. He beheld the reserve under Greene, locked in one solid mass,
faces, hands, musquets, swords, all turned to the foe; an island of heroes,

encircled by a sea of British hirelings. The Royal Army extended far
over the fields to the foot of Osbourne's hill; the Red Cross banner waved
over the walls of the Quaker Temple. Far to the South, scattered bands
of Continentals were hurrying from the fields, some bearing their wounded
comrades, some grasping broken arms, some dragging their shattered forms
slowly along. Still that brave reserve of Greene, that wreck of Sullivan's
right wing, fought around the banner of the Stars, while the Red Cross flag
glared in their faces from every side.

The declining sun shone over the fight, lighting up the battle-clouds with
its terrible glow. It was now five o'clock. But one hour since the conflict
began, and yet a thousand souls had gone from this field of blood up to
the throne of God!

The sky is blue and smiling yonder, as you see it through the rifted
clouds—look there upon the serene azure, and tell me! Do you not behold
the ghosts of the dead, an awful and shadowy band, clustering yonder
—ghastly with wounds—dripping with blood—clustering in one solemn
meeting around that Impenetrable Bar?

At one glance, Pulaski took in the terrible details of the scene.

“Now,” shouted Washington, “Let us go down!”

He pointed to the valley with his sword. All his reserve, all his calmness
of manner were gone.

“Let us go down!” he shouted again. “The day is lost, but we will
give these British gentlemen our last farewell. Pulaski—do you hear me
—do you echo me—do you feel as I feel? The day is lost, but we will go
down!”

“Down!” echoed Pulaski, as his eye caught the glow flashing from the
eye of Washington—“Give way there! Down to the valley, for our last
farewell!”

Washington quivered from head to foot. His eye glared with the fever
of strife. The sunlight shone over his bared brow, now radiant with an
immortal impulse.

His hand gathered his sword in an iron grasp—he spoke to his steed—
the noble horse moved slowly, on, through the ranks of Pulaski's legion.

Those rough soldiers uttered a yell, as they beheld the magnificent form
of Washington, quivering with battle-rage.

“Come, Pulaski! Our banner is there! Now we will go down!”

Then there was a sight to see once—and die!

Rising in his stirrups, Washington pointed to the fight, and swept down
the hill like a whirlwind, followed by Pulaski's band, Pulaski himself vainly
endeavoring to rival his pace, at the head of the iron men.

General Greene, turning his head over his shoulders, in the thickest of
the fight, beheld with terror, with awe, the approach of Washington. He
would have thrown his horse in the path of the chief, but the voice of

Washington—terrible in its calmness, irresistible in its rage—thundered
even amid the clamor of that fight.

“Greene—come on!”

Who could resist that look, the upraised sword, the voice?

The band of Pulaski thundered by, and Greene followed with horse and
foot, with steed and bayonet! The fire blazing in Washington's eye spread
like an electric flash along the whole column. The soldiers were men no
longer; no fear of bayonet or bullet now! The very horses caught the
fever of that hour.

One cry burst like thunder on the British host:—“Give way there!
Washington comes to battle!”

Far down the hill, La Fayette and the Life Guard were doing immortal
deeds, for the banner of the stars.

Brows bared, uniforms fluttering in rags, they followed the Boy of Nineteen,
into the vortex of the fight, waving evermore that banner overhead.

They saw Washington come. You should have heard them shout, you
should have seen their swords how, dripping with blood, they glittered on
high.—La Fayette saw Washington come, yes, the majestic form, the sunlighted
brow! That sight inflamed his blood—

“Now, La Fayette, come on!”

They were ranged beside the band of Pulaski, these children of Washington;
the gallant Frenchman led them on.

Thus Washington, Pulaski, Greene, La Fayette, thundered down into
the fight. It was terrible to hear the tramp of their horses' hoofs.

Captain Waldemar—the brave partizan—with the last twenty of his
riders, was holding a de perate fight with thrice the number of British
troopers.—He too beheld Washington come, he too beheld that solid
column at his back; with one bound he dashed through the British band;
in another moment he was by the side of La Fayette. Washington turned
to him —

“Waldemar, we go yonder to make our last farewell! Come on!”

And they went,—yes, Washington at the head of the column led them
on. With banners waving all along the column, with swords and bayonets
mingling in one blaze of light, that iron column went to battle.

The British were in the valley and over the fields; you might count
them by thousands.

There was one horrid crash, a sound as though the earth had yawned to
engulph the armies.

Then, oh then, you might see this bolt of battle, crashing into the British
host, as a mighty river rushing into the sea, drives the ocean waves far
before it. You might see the bared brow of Washington, far over swords
and spears; then might you hear the yell of the British, as this avalanche
of steel burst on their ranks! Men, horses, all were levelled before the
path of this human hurricane. Follow the sword of Washington, yonder,

two hundred yards right into the heart of the British army, he is gone,—
gone in terrible glory! On either side swell the British columns, but this
avalanche is so sudden, so unexpected, that their proud array are for the
moment paralyzed.

And now Washington turns again. He wheels, and his band wheel with
him. He comes back, and they come with him. His sword rises and
falls, and a thousand swords follow its motion.

And down—shrieking, torn, crushed,—the foemen are trampled; another
furrow of British dead strew the ground. Vain were it to tell the deeds of
all the heroes, in that moment of glory. Greene, La Fayette, Pulaski,
Waldemar, the thousand soldiers, all seem to have but one arm, one soul!
They struck at once, they shouted at once, at once they conquered.

“Now,” he shouted, as his uniform, covered with dust and blood, quivered
with the glorious agitation that shook his proud frame, “Now, we can
afford to retreat!”

It was a magnificent scene.

Washington—his steed halted by the roadside, the men of Pulaski and
his own life-guard ranged at his back—Washington gazed upon his legions
as they swept by. They came with dripping swords, with broken arms;
—horse and foot, went hurrying by, spreading along the rode to the south,
while the banner of the stars waved proudly overhead. First, the legions
of Greene, then the band of Waldemar, with the gallant La Fayette riding
in their midst. He was ashy pale, that chivalrous boy, and the manly arm
of a veteran trooper held him in the saddle. His leg was shattered by a
musquet ball. Yet, as he went by, he raised his hand, still grasping that
well-used sword, and murmured faintly that word his French tongue pronounced
so well—“Washington!” Washington beheld the hero, and smiled.

“God be with you, my brave friend!”

Then came the wreck of Sullivan's division, blood-stained their faces,
broken their arms, wild and wan their looks, sad and terrible their shattered
array. They swept by to the south, their gallant General still with his
band.

“Now,” said Washington, while the Life Guard and Pulaski's men encircled
him with a wall of steel, “Now we will retreat!”

At this moment, while the British recovered from their late panic, were
rushing forward in solid columns, the face and form of Washington presented
a spectacle of deep interest.

He sat erect upon his steed, gazing with mingled sadness and joy, now
upon the retrearing Continentals, now upon the advancing British. Around
him were the stout troopers; by his side the warrior form of Pulaski, far
away hills and valleys, clouded with smoke, covered with marching legions;
above, the blue sky, seen in broken glimpses—the blue sky and the declining
sun.

The blue and buff uniform of the Hero was covered with dust and blood.

His sword, lifted in his extended arm, was dyed with crimson drops.

You could see his chest heave again, and his eye glare once more:

“On, comrades, now we can afford to retreat!”

And the sunlight poured gladly over the uncovered brow of Washington.

This was the last incident of the battle! But an hour since the conflict
began, and yet the green valley is crowded with the bodies of dead men.
The Quaker temple throbs with the groans of the dying. The clear spring
of cold water, down in the lap of the valley, is now become a pool of blood,
its yellow sands clotted with carnage.

A thousand hearts, that one brief hour ago, beat with the warmest pulsations
of life, are now stilled forever. And at this dread hour, as if in
mockery of the scene, while the souls of the slain thronged trembling
to their dread account, the sun set calmly over the battle field, the blue
sky smiled again—the Brandywine went laughing on!

Let us group together these Legends of the past, illustrative of the
Romance and Tragedy of Brandywine.

XV.—THE HUNTER-SPY.

Not in the dim cathedral aisle, where the smoke of the incense ascends
for evermore, and the image of the Virgin smiles above the altar—not in
the streets of the colossal city, where the palace and the hut, the beggar and
the lord, are mingled in the great spectacle of life—not even in the quiet
home of civilization, where the glow of the hearth-side flame lights up the
face of the mother as she hushes her babe to slumber—

But among the mountains, where sky, and rock, and tree, and cataract,
speak of the presence of their God,—Nature, with her thousand voices,
sings forever, her anthem of thankfulness and prayer.

It is a sublime anthem which she sings out yonder, in the untrodden
wilderness. The cataract thunders it, as in all the glory of its flashing
waters, it springs from the cliff into the darkness below. The breeze, too,
softly murmuring among the tops of the evergreen pines, in the calmness
of the summer morn, in the shadows of the summer eve, whispers that
anthem, as with an angel's voice. The sky writes it upon her vault, not
only in the sun and stars, and moon, but in every feathery cloud that skims
over its blue dome, in the deep silence of a summer noon.

But at night, when the storm comes out, and mingles cataract and rock,
forest and sky, in one fierce whirlpool of battle; then the thunder sings the
anthem, and the lightning writes it on the universe.

It was noon among the mountains, nearly a hundred years ago, when the
sun shone down through the woods upon the waters of a cataract, trembling
in tumultuous beauty on the verge of a granite cliff, ere it dashed into
the abyss below.

Let us pause upon the verge of this cliff, and gaze upon Nature as she

stands before us, clad in the wild glory which she has worn since the hour
when “Let there be Light!” from the lips of Divinity, thundered over the
chaos of the new-born world.

Upon the verge of the cliff. Grey and hoary, overgrown with vines, and
clumps of moss. It trembles beneath our feet—trembles as with the pulse
of the cataract. Look yonder—a mass of waters, not fifty yards in width,
emerging from the foliage, gliding between walls of rocks, gleaming for a
moment in bright sunshine on the edge of darkness, and then dashing in one
long stream of light and spray, far down into night.

Look below—ah! you tremble, you shrink back appalled. That void
is terrible in its intense blackness. And from that abyss, for evermore,
arises a dull, sullen sound, like the whispering of a thousand voices. It is
the cataract, speaking to the rocks which receive it.

There is a rugged beauty in the spectacle. The woods all around, with
grey cliffs breaking from the canopy of leaves; the sky, seen there, far
above the cataract and its chasm; the cataract itself, bridged by fallen
tree.

A massy oak, rent from the earth by the storm, extends across the cataract,
just where it plunges into darkness. Here, on the western side, you
behold its roots, half torn from the ground—yonder, on the eastern side,
its withered branches, strongly contrast with the waving foliage all around.
And between the rocks and the fallen tree, glide the waters, ere they dash
below.

As we stand here, on this rock, leaning over the darkness, tell me, does
not the awful silence of these primeval woods—only broken by the eternal
anthem of the mountain stream—strike your hearts with a deep awe?

Another music shook the woods an hour ago. Strange sounds, scarce
ever heard in these woods before; sounds deeper than the roar of the cataract,
yet not so loud as thunder. Distant shouts, too, like the yell of maddened
men, were borne upon the breeze, and, for a moment, the cataract
seemed to hush itself into silence, as a horrible chorus of groans broke over
the woods.

What meant these sounds, disturbing the sanctity of the Almighty's
forest? We cannot tell; but, only yesterday, a brave band of men, attired
in scarlet and gold, with bayonets gleaming over their heads, passed this
way in solid columns.

Only yesterday, their commander—a man of courtly look and glittering
apparel—rode through these woods, pointing gaily with his sword, as the
warm hope of victory flushed his face: while at his side, journeyed a young
man, with thoughtful eye and solemn face. The commander was clad in
scarlet and gold—the young man, in blue and silver. The commander was
General Braddock; the young man, Colonel Washington.

All day long the sounds of battle, borne from afar by the breeze, have
shrieked through the woods, but now all is still.

Yet hold—there is a crashing sound among the branches, on this western
side of the waterfall—look! A face is seen among the leaves, another, and
another. Three faces, wan, and wild, and bloody. In a moment, three
forms spring from the covert and stand upon this rock, gazing around upon
chasm, and wood, and sky, with the wild glare of hunted tigers.

The first form, standing on the verge of the cliff, with the blue uniform,
fluttering in ribbands over his broad chest, and spotted with blood on the
arms. A man in the prime of life, with brown hair clustering around his
brow, and a blue eye lighting up his sunburnt face. Though his uniform is
rent and torn, you can recognize the Provincial Sergeant in the native troops
of General Braddock's army.

At his back stand two British regulars, clad in scarlet, with long military
boots upon each leg, and heavy grenadier caps upon each brow. As they
gaze around—their weaponless hands dripping with blood—a curse breaks
from each lip.

“Don't swear,” exclaims the Sergeant, as he turns from the chasm to
his brother soldiers. “It's bad enough as it is, without swearing! It's
like to drive me mad when I think of it! Only yesterday we hurried on,
through these very woods, and now—ugh! D'ye remember what we saw,
by the banks of the river, not an hour ago? Piles of dead men, those men
our comrades, each brow with the scalp torn from the scull—little rivers of
blood, each river running over the sod, and pouring into the Monongahela,
until its waves became as red as your uniform. Ah! I tell you, boys, it
makes a man sick to think of it!”

“And them Injins,” exclaimed the tallest of the British soldiers, “how
like born devils they screech! The fightin' I don't mind, but I confess the
screechin' hurts one's feelin's.”

The other soldier, with a darkening brow, only muttered a single word,
hissing it, as with the force of his soul, through his set teeth:

“The Spy!”

At that word, the Sergeant started as though bitten by a rattle-snake.
His face, so frank in its hardy manliness of expression, was violently contorted,
his hands clenched.

“Aye, the Spy!” he growled: “Would that I had him here!”

He bent over the chasm, his blue eye glaring with dangerous light, as his
fingers quivered with the frenzy of revenge.

“Would that I had him here, on this rock! By that home which I never
hope to see again, I would give my life to hold him, for one moment only,
on the verge of this rock, and then —”

“Send him yelling down into the pool below!” added the tall soldier.

The other soldier merely wiped the blood from his brow, and muttered
a deep oath, coupled with the ominous words—“The Spy!”

“Come, my boys, we must hurry on!” cried the Sergeant, his form
rising proudly in the sunlight.—“Them Injin devils are in our rear, and

you know the place where all us fellows, who dont happen to be killed, are
to meet! Aye, aye! Come on! Over this fallen tree be our way!”

Followed by the regular soldiers, the Provincial Sergeant crosses the
fearful bridge. You see them quivering there, with but a foot of unhewn
timber between them and the blackness of the chasm; the sunbeam lights
up their tattered uniform and blood-stained faces.

In the centre of the fallen tree, even while the roar of the cataract deafens
his ears, the Sergeant suddenly turns and confronts his comrades:

“Did n't he look beautiful?” he shouts; and his eye flashes, and his
cheek glows—“Yes, beautiful's the word! I mean our young Virginia
Colonel, charging in the thickest of the fight, with his sword uplifted, and
his forehead bare! Did you see his coat, torn by the bullets, which pattered
about him like hail-stones? And then, as he knelt over the dyin' General,
shielding him from bullet and tomahawk, at the hazard of his life,—I vow
he did look beautiful!”

As he speaks, his form trembles with the memory of the battle, and the
tree trembles beneath him. The British soldiers do not speak a word—
their position is too fearful for words—but with upraised arms they beseech
the Sergeant to hurry on.

Across the perilous bridge, and along this eastern rock—a murmur of joy
escapes from each lip.

Then, through the thickly-gathered foliage, into this forest-arbor, formed
by the wild vines, hanging from the limbs of this centuried oak.

A quiet place, with gleams of sunshine escaping through the leaves, and
lighting up the mossy sod, and the massive trunk of the grand old tree.

What means that half-muttered shriek, starting from each heart, and
hushed by the biting of each lip?

The Sergeant starts back, places a hand on the mouth of each soldier, and
his deep whisper thrills in ears—

“In the name of Heaven be still!”

Then every breath is hushed, and every eye is fixed upon the cause of
that strange surprise.

There, at the foot of the tree, his head laid against its trunk, his limbs
stretched along the sod, slumbers a man of some fifty years, one arm bent
under his grey hairs, while the other clasps the barrel of a rifle. Gaze
upon that sunburnt face, pinched in the lips, hollow in the cheeks, the brow
narrow and contracted, the hair and eyebrows black, sprinkled with grey,
and tell me, is it not the index of a mean heart, a cankered soul?

The form, clad in the shirt, leggins and moccasins of one of the outcasts
of civilization, in whom were combined the craft of the pale face, with the
ferocity of the savage, is lean, straight and angular, with the sinews gathered
around the bones like iron thongs.

And while the three soldiers, with darkening faces, gaze upon him, he
sleeps on, this wild hunter of the wild woods.

Do you see that silken purse, slightly protruding from the breast of the
coarse hunting shirt. Look—even as the sunbeam falls upon it, the gleam
of golden guineas shines from its net-work.

There is a strange story connected with that silken purse, with its golden
guineas.

Not ten days ago, the British General was encountered in the wild forest
of the Alleghany mountains, by a tall hunter, who offered to act as his guide
to Fort Pitt, where the French held their position. The offer was accepted
—the reward fifty guineas. The young Colonel Washington distrusted this
hunter—traitor was stamped on his face—but Braddock laughed at his
distrust.

The guide led them forward—led them into the ambush of this morning,
and then disappeared.

At this moment, five hundred hearts are cold on Braddock's field—there
are an hundred little rills of blood pouring into the waves of Monongahela
river; Braddock himself lies mangled and bleeding in the arms of Washington;—and
here, in this arbor of the wild wood, lulled to rest by the anthem
of the cataract, sleeps the hunter-guide, with the silken purse and its
fifty guineas, protruding from his breast. Every guinea bears on its surface
the head of King Louis. Every guinea was given as the price of a life,
and yet there is no blood upon them; but the sun, shining through the
foliage lights them with a mild, warm glow.

And all the while the three soldiers stand there, biting their lips, and
clenching their hands together. There is something fearful in this ominous
silence.

At last the Sergeant advances, stealthily, it is true, yet the sound of his
footstep echoes through the wood. Still the Hunter sleeps on. Then with
a rude knife he severs a piece of the wild vine, ties one end around a projecting
limb of the oak, pushes the leaves aside, and you behold the other
end dangling over the chasm.

A flood of sunlight rushes in through the opening, bathes with its glow
the darkened face of the Sergeant, and the withered face of the sleeping
man. Around the form of the Sergeant, so vigorous in its robust manhood,
extends the mass of foliage, like a frame around a picture. For a moment,
he stands there, on the edge of the eastern rock, the grape vine dangling in
one hand, while his straining eye peruses the darkness of the abyss.

As he turns to his comrades again, he utters this singular sentence in a
whisper:

“Does n't it seem to you that a man tied to this grape-vine by the neck,
and forced to leap from the rock, would stand a mighty good chance of
being—hung?”

A grim smile passes over each face—still the hunter sleeps on; he sleeps
the sound slumber of hardship and toil.

Presently the Sergeant advances, shakes him roughly by the shoulder,
and shouts in his ear—

“Come, Isaac, get up. To-day you die!”

The sleeping man quivered, opened his eyes, beheld the darkened face
above, and then clutched for his rifle.

With a sudden movement, the Sergeant flings it beyond his reach.

“You know me, Isaac. You see the blood upon my coat. You know
your doom. Get up, and say your prayers.”

This was said in a very low voice, yet every word went to the Hunter's
heart. In silence he arose. As he stood erect upon the sod, it might be
seen that he was a man of powerful frame and hardened sinews. He gazed
from face to face, and then toward the cliff—his countenance changed from
sunburnt brown to asky paleness.

“What d'ye mean?” he falters. “You don't intend mischief to an
old man?”

Paler in the face, tremulous in each iron limb—ah! how cowardice and
crime transform a man of iron sinews into a trembling wretch!

“Say your prayers, Isaac,” was the only answer which awaited him.
As the Sergeant spoke, the light in his blue eye grew wilder; he trembled
from his heart to his finger-ends, but not with fear.

Again the Hunter raised his stealthy grey eye, ranging the arbor with a
glance of lightning-like rapidity. All hope of escape was idle.

“Let me finish him with the knife!” growled the tall soldier.

“Say the word, Sergeant, and I'll send a bullet from his own rifle through
his brain!”

“I know'd ye when ye was a boy, down yander in the hills of old Virginny,
Isaac,” said the Sergeant; “and know'd ye for a liar and thief.
Now ye're grown to a tolerable good age—grey hairs, and wrinkles, too,—
I know ye for a traitor and a murderer!”

“But, Jacob, you won't kill me here, like a dog?” exclaimed the Hunter,
in a hollow voice.

“There's a matter of five or six hundred men dead, this hour, on yonder
battlefield. Not only dead, but mangled—their skulls peeled—ugh! It's
an ugly word, I know, but it's a fact—their skulls peeled, and their bodies
cut to pieces by musquet balls and tomahawks. You did it all, Isaac. You
sold your countrymen—your flesh and blood, as I might say, and sold 'em
to the French and Injins.—Come, Isaac, say your prayers!”

There was a strange contrast between the broad, manly figure of the
Sergeant, rising to its full stature, and the slender form of the Hunter,
cringing as from the danger of a threatened blow. The sunlight fell over
both faces, one flushed with a settled purpose, the other livid with the extremity
of fear. In the shadows of the woody arbor the British soldiers
stood, awaiting in silence the issue of the scene.

And ever and anon, in the pauses of the fearful conversation, the cataract
howled below.

“I've no prayers to say,” said the Hunter, in a dogged tone. “Come—
murder me—if you like, I'm ready!”

There was something sublime in the courage of the Coward, who
trembled as with an ague fit, as he said the words.

The words, the tone, the look of the man seemed to touch even the determined
heart of the Sergeant.

“But you may have a wife, Isaac, or a child—” he faltered—“You may
wish to leave some message?”

“I may have a wife and child and I may not,” said the Hunter, quietly
baring his throat. “Come, if you're goin' to murder me, begin!”

Then commenced a scene, whose quiet horror may well chill the blood in
our veins, as we picture it.

The Sergeant advanced, seized the end of the grape-vine, and, while the
wretch trembled in his grasp, knotted it firmly about his neck, gaunt and
sinewy as it was.

The doomed man stood on the edge of the cliff.—Below him boiled the
waters—above him smiled the sky. His deathsman was at his side.

For a moment, the Hunter turned toward the comrades of the Sergeant.

“Kill him like a dog!” growled one of the soldiers.

“Remember the battle, and choke him until his eyes start!” exclaimed
the other.

The eye of the miserable man wandered to the face of his Executioner.
Calm and erect the Sergeant stood there; the only signs of agitation which
he manifested, were visible in a slight tremulous motion of his lip, a sudden
paleness of his cheek.

“Ain't there no pity?” whined the Hunter. “Ye see I'm not fit to die
—the waterfall skeers me. No pity, did ye say?”

“None!” thundered the Sergeant, and with one movement of his arm
pushed the doomed man from the rock.

Then—as the limb quivered with the burden of the fearful fruit which it
bore—as the blackened face and starting eyes, and protruding tongue glowed
horribly in the sunlight—as one long, deep cry of agony mingled with the
roar of the cataract—the Sergeant seized the purse of guineas and hurled it
far down into the darkness of the chasm.

“Let the traitor's gold go with his soul!” he cried, as the coin, escaping
from the purse, sparkled like spray-drops through the air.

The level rays of the setting sun streamed over the dead man's face.

All was desolate and silent in the forest—the Sergeant and his comrades
had passed on their way—the deep anthem of the waterfall arose to the
sunset Heaven.

There was a footstep on the fallen tree, and a boy of some twelve years,

bearing a burden on his back, came tripping lightly over the cataract. He
was roughly clad, in a dress of wild deer's hide, yet there was a frankness
about his sunburnt face, a daring in his calm grey eye, which made you
forget his uncouth attire. As he came bounding on, as fearlessly as though
the floor of some quiet home were beneath him—the breeze tossed his
brown hair aside from his face, until it waved in curls of glossy softness.

“Father!” his young voice resounded through the woods, clear and shrill
as the tones of careless boyhood. “Father, do you sleep yet?” he cried,
as he crossed the tree. “You know I went this morning to the Indian's
wigwam to procure food and drink for you. Here it is—I'm safe back
again. Father, I say!”

Again he called, and still no answer.

He stood on the astern side of the waterfall, near the forest arbor.

“Ah! I know what you're about!” he laughed, with childish gaiety.
“You want me to think you're asleep—you want to spring up and frighten
me! Ha, ha, ha!”

And gaily laughing, he went through the foliage, and stood in the forest
arbor—stood before the DEAD MAN.

His FATHER, hanging by the grape-vine to the oaken limb, his feet above
the chasm, the sunset glow upon his face. That face as black as ink; the
eyes on the cheek; the purpled tongue lolling on the jaw—his father!
Every breath of air that stirred waved his grey hairs about his brow, and
swayed his stiffened body to and fro.

The boy gazed upon it, but did not weep. His father might be a thief,
traitor, murderer, but the son knew it not. The old man was kind to him
—yes, treacherous to all the world, he loved his motherless child!

“Father!” the boy gasped, and the bread and bottle which he bore on
his shoulders, fell to the ground.

He approached and gazed upon the body of the dead man, You might
see a twitching of the muscles of his young face, a strange working of the
mouth, an elevation and depression of the eye-brows, but his grey eyes
were undimmed by a tear. There was something terrible in the silent
sternness with which the child gazed into his murdered father's face.

There was a paper pinned to the breast of the dead man, a rough paper
scrawled with certain uncouth characters. The boy took the paper—he
could not read—but carefully folding it, he placed it within the breast of his
jacket, near to his heart.

Twenty years afterward, that paper was the cause of a cold-blooded and
horrible murder, wild and unnatural in its slightest details.

Long and earnestly the boy stood gazing upon that distorted face. The
same sunbeam that shone upon the visage of the dead, lighted up the singular
countenance of the boy.

At last, approaching the edge of the cliff, he took his father's hands within
his own. They were very cold. He placed his hands upon the old man's

face. It was clammy and moist. The boy began to shudder with a fear
hitherto unknown to him. For the first time, he stood in the presence of
Death.

His broken ejaculations were calculated to touch the hardest heart.

“Father!” he would whisper, “you aint dead, are you? If you are
dead what'll I do? Come, father, and tell me ye aint dead? Father! I
say, father!”

As the sun went down, that cry quivered through the woods.

The moon arose. Still by her pale light, there on the verge of the cliff,
stood the boy, gazing in his father's face.

“I'll cut him down, that's what I'll do!” he said, taking a hunter's knife
from his girdle.

Standing on tip-toe he hacked the grape-vine with the knife; it snapped
with a sharp sound: she boy reached forth his arms to grasp his father's
body; for a moment he held it trembling there, the blackened face silvered
by the light of the moon.

But his grasp was feeble, compared to the weight which it sustained, and
the body passed from his hands. There was a hissing sound in the air—a
dead pause—a heavy splash in the waters below.

The boy knelt on the rock and gazed below. I confess, as I see him
kneeling there, the light of the moon upon his waving locks—the silence of
night only broken by the eternal anthem of the cataract,—that I cannot
contemplate without a shudder, that sad and terrible picture:

The Boy, leaning over the rock, as he gazes with straining eyes, far down
into the darkness of the abyss, for the DEAD BODY OF HIS Father!

XVI.—THE SON OF THE HUNTER-SPY.

The gleam of the hearthside taper flashed far over the valley of the Brandywine.
From the upper window of that peaceful home, it flamed a long
and quivering ray of golden light.

The old house stood alone, some few paces from the road, at least an
hundred yards from the waters of the Brandywine. A small fabric of dark
grey stone, standing in the centre of a slope of grassy sod, with steep roof,
narrow windows, and a rustic porch before the door. On either side of the
grassy slope, the woods darkened, thick and luxuriant; above, the universe
of stars shed their calm, tranquil light, over the slumbering valley; from
afar, the musical murmur of the waves, rolling over their pebbled bed, broke
the deep silence of the night.

Let us look through the darkness, and by the clear starlight, behold this
small two-storied fabric, in all its rustic beauty, while yonder, not twenty
yards distant, a hay-rick rises from the level of the sod. All is still around
this home of Brandywine,—the house, the gently-ascending slope, the conical
hay-rick, the surrounding woods, present a picture of deep repose.

We will enter the home, yes, into the upper room, from whose narrow
window the ray of the fireside taper, gleams along the shadowy valley.

An old man, sitting easily in his oaken arm-chair, the glow of the candle
upon his wrinkled face and snowy hairs. The smoke of his pipe winds
around his face and head; his blue eyes gleaming with calm light, and
composed features, and attitude of careless ease, all betoken a mind at peace
with God and man.

On one side you behold his couch, with its coverlid of unruffled white;
yonder a rude table, placed beneath a small mirror, with a Bible, old and
venerable, laid upon its surface. There is a narrow hearth, simmering with
a slight fire of hickory faggots; beside the hearth, you see the door of a
closet, its panels hewn of solid oak, and darkened into inky blackness by
the touch of time.

In the centre of the room, his calm face glowing in the light of the candle,
sits the old man, coat and vest thrown aside, as he quietly smokes his
grateful pipe. As he knocks the ashes from the bowl, you may see that
he is one-armed; for the right arm has been severed at the shoulder: the
sleeve dangles by his side.

You will confess that it is but a quiet, nay, a tame picture, which I have
drawn for you—an old and one-armed man, smoking his evening pipe, ere
he retires to rest, his wrinkled face melowed with unspeakable content, his
blue eyes gleaming from beneath the thick grey eye-brows, as with the
light of blessed memories.

And yet this scene, placed beside another scene which will occur ere an
hour passes, might well draw tears from a heart of granite.

Suddenly the old man places his hand against his brow, his mild blue
eye moistens with a tear. His soul is with the past—with the wife who
now sleeps the last slumber, under the sod of the Quaker graveyard—with
the scenes of battle in the dim forests, where the rifle-blaze streams redly
over the leaves, and the yell of the Indian mingles with the war of the
cataract.

All at once there comes a memory which blanches the old man's cheek,
fills with wild light his calm blue eye. Looking back into time, he beholds
a dim recess of the forest, perched above the waters of the cataract, the sunbeam
playing over its moss, while the face of a dead man glares horribly in
the last flush of the sunset hour.

The old man rises, paces the floor, with his only hand wipes the moisture
from his brow.

“It was right,” he murmurs—“He had betrayed a thousand brave men
to death, and he died!”

And yet, look where he might, through that quiet room, he beheld a dead
man, suspended to the limb of a forest oak, with the sunlight—that last red
flush of sunset, which is so beautiful—playing warmly over the livid features.

This you will confess, was a terrible memory, or a strange frenzy. An

old man whose life for at least twenty years, had been spent in the scenes
of a quiet home, to behold a livid face, working convulsively in death,
wherever he turned!

“I know not why it is, but wherever I turn, I seem to see—yes, I do
see—a dead man's face! And whenever I try to think of my dead wife, I
hear a voice repeating—`this night, this night you die!' ”

As the old man spoke, resuming his pipe, a slight sound disturbed the
silence of the room. He turned, and there, like a picture framed by the
rough timbers of the doorway, beheld the form of a young girl, clad slightly,
in her night-dress with a mass of brown hair about her neck and shoulders.

One hand was raised, the finger to her lip, and the round white arm,
gleaming in the light; the other grasped the handle of the door.

There was something very beautiful in the sight.

Not that her dress was fashioned of silk or purple, or that her white
neck shone with the gleam of diamonds or pearls. Ah, no! Her dress
was made of coarse homespun cloth; it left her arms, and neck, and feet,
bare to the light. Still there was a beauty about her young face, which
glowed on the lips and cheeks, with the warmth of a summer dawn, and
shone in the deep blue eyes, with the tranquil loveliness of a starlight
night.

Her hair too; you cannot say that it gathered in curls, or floated in
tresses; but to tell the sober truth, in color it was of that rich brown which
deepens into black, and waving from her white forehead, it fell in one glossy
mass, down to the white bosom, which had never been ruffled by a thought
of sin.

With regard to the young form, whose outlines gleamed on you, even
from the folds of her coarse dress, you could not affirm that it rivalled the
dream of the Sculptor, the Venus de Medici, or burst forth in all the
majestic beauty of one of Raphael's Painted Poems. It was but the form
of a Peasant Girl, reminding you in every hue and outline, of a wild forest
rose, that flourishing alone amid large green leaves, trembles on the verge
of its perfect bloom; not so gorgeous as a hot-house plant, still very warm,
and very loveable, and very beautiful.

And she stood there, even on the threshold, her finger to her lip, gazing
with a look of wild alarm, upon the wrinkled face of her father, the one-armed
schoolmaster of Brandywine.

“Mary!” the old man exclaimed, his eyes expanding with wonder.

“Hush, father! Do you not hear the tread of armed men? Listen!
Do you not hear the rattling of arms? Hark! That deep-toned whisper,
coupled with an oath—`Mayland the spy—break the door—arrest, and
bear him to the British camp!' ”

And while the word trembled on her lip, a dull, heavy sound broke like
a knell upon the air. It was the crashing of a musket-stock against the
door of the schoolmaster's home.

“Fly! For God's sake, fly!” exclaimed Mary, darting forward, and
laying her white hand on the old man's arm.

“Fly!” he echoed, with a bewildered look—“Wherefore? Whom
have I wronged, that I should fly from my own home at midnight, like a
hunted beast?”

In brief words, uttered with gasping breath and tremulous bosom, the
Daughter revealed the strange secret:

“A week ago, you gave shelter to an old man, clad in the garb of forest-hunter.
That man left in your charge a pacquet, which you promised to
transmit without delay, to the Camp of Washington!”

“And did so, this very morning.”

“That pacquet was stolen from the camp-chest of General Howe. It
contained his plans of battle—Now do you guess wherefore the British soldiers
surround your house, whispering your name as `Mayland the Spy?' ”

The old man's countenance fell.

“Oh, that I had my own good right arm again!” he cried, after a moment's
pause—“I would defy the whole pack of red-coat hounds!”

Harsh language, this! But it must be confessed that the old school-master
was prejudiced against the British; he had seen but one side of the
question—aye, read it too, in the smouldering ruins of the homes they had
burned, in the livid faces of the farmers they had butchered.

The Peasant Girl—clad lightly as she was, in her night dress—tripped
softly to the opposite side of the room, and opened the closet door. In a
moment, she had torn the loose boards from the floor.

“Father, the way of escape lies before you! This ladder descends
from the closet into the cellar; from the cellar a subterranean passage leads
to the side of the hill! Quick—there is no time to be lost! For God's
sake—fly!”

`The ladder was used as a stairway in the old times; the underground
passage was made in the time o' the Injings,” murmured the old man.
“But my daughter, who will protect you?”

“They seek not to harm me,” she hurriedly exclaimed—“Hark! Do
you hear their shouts?”

And, as if in answer to her words, there came a hoarse and murmuring
cry from beneath the windows.

“One blow, and we'll force the door!” a deep voice was heard—“Remember,
comrades! a hundred guineas, if we catch the Spy!”

The old man hesitated no longer. Placing a foot on the ladder, he began
to descend. His daughter bending over him, held the light in her extended
hand; its rays lighted his grey hairs, and warmed the soft outlines of
her face.

“Quick, father!” she gaspingly whispered—“The passage leads out on
the hill-side, near the hay-stack! Ha! he descends—one moment more
and he will stand in the passage! Another moment, and he will be free!”

Holding the light above her head, she swept her brown hair aside from
her face, and gazed into the darkness beneath with dilating eyes.

Still from beneath the windows arose that hoarse cry; again the crash of
musquet-stocks against the door.

“In truth, thee father is in great danger,” said a mild voice, which made
the young girl start as though she had trod on a serpent's fang.

She turned, and beheld a man of slender frame, clad in the plain garb of
the Quaker faith. Gaze upon him and tell me, in that contracted face, with
sharp nose and hawk-like grey eyes, thin lips and brown hair, curling to
the shoulders, do you recognize some Memory of the Past?

Does it look like the face of the Hunter-Spy, who hung above the
chasm, long years ago, or like the countenance of his Son, the laughing boy,
whose blood was congealed to ice, by the vision of the murdered man?

“Gilbert Gates!” exclaimed Mary; “here, too, in this hour of peril!
Then indeed, does evil threaten us!”

“Maiden, thee wrongs me,” exclaimed that soft and insinuating voice.
“Passing along the valley, on the way to my farm, which—as thee knows
—lies near Brenton's ford, I beheld thee father's house surrounded by
armed men, who clamored for his blood. I found entrance by a back
window, and am here to save thee.”

“Burst open the door!” arose the shout from beneath the windows.
“We'll trap the Rebel in his den!”

“You here to save me?” exclaimed Mary, as she blushed from the
bosom to the brow with scorn. “I tell you man, there is Traitor on your
forehead and in your eye!”

“Look thee, maiden—but two hours ago, thee father did reject the offer
of marriage which I made to thee, with words of bitterness and scorn.
Now he is threatened with death—nay, smile not in derision—thy honor is
menaced with ruin! Be mine—yea, consent to receive my hand in marriage,
and I will save ye!

“Ah! his footsteps are in the cellar—he gains the passage—he is saved!”
exclaimed Mary, as she flung the rays of the light into the gloom below.
“Be yours!” and while every pulse throbbed tumultuously with loathing,
she turned to the strange man by her side—“Neither your assumed dress,
nor awkward attempt at the Quaker dialect, can deceive me! I know you
—scorn you! Nay, do not advance—I am but a weak girl, but dare to
pollute me, with but a finger's touch, and as heaven nerves my arm, I will
brain you with this oaken brand!”

She stood on the verge of the closet, one hand grasping the light, while
the other raised aloft a solid piece of oak, which she had seized from the
floor.

You can see the man of slender figure and Quaker dress shrink back appalled.
A wild light blazes in his grey eye; his long, talon-like fingers are
pressed convulsively against his breast. Suddenly his hard features were

softened by a look of emotion, which played over his face like a sunbeam
trembling on a rock of granite.

“Maiden, did thee know my life—MY OATH—thee would not taunt me
thus. He died alone in the wild wood—ah, even now, I see the sunset
flush upon his icy face! My father—the only friend I ever had—the only
thing I ever loved. Maiden, become mine, and all shall be forgotten—all,
even my OATH!”

Clasping his hands, while his cold grey eyes were wet with tears, he advanced,
and gazed upon the warm bloom of the maiden's face.

For a moment, she gazed upon him, while the flush of scorn, which reddened
her cheeks, was succeeded by a look of deep compassion.

Again that deep roar beneath the windows—hark! A crash—a wild yell
—“We have the Rebel up stairs, and the guineas are ours!”

“Does thee consent?” exclaimed Gilbert Gates, advancing a single step.

“Ha! The door between the cellar and the passage is unfastened!
But I will save my father at the hazard of my life!”

With one bound she flung herself upon the ladder, and with the light
above her head, descended into the darkness of the cellar. As she went
down, her hair fell wavingly over her neck and shoulders, over the bosom
which heaved tumultuously into the light.

Gilbert Gates in his Quaker garb, with his hands folded over his narrow
chest, stood alone in the darkness of the school-master's bed-room. All
was darkness around him, yet there was a light within, which burned his
heart-strings, and filled his blood with liquid fire.

Darkness around him; no eye to look upon the writhings of his face; and
yet, even there through the gloom, he beheld that fearful vision—a dead
man swinging over the abyss of a cataract, with the sunset flush upon his
icy face.

Suddenly there was the sound of trampling feet upon the stairs; then the
blaze of torches flashed into the room, and some twenty forms dressed in
the attire of Tory Refugees—half-robber, half-soldier—came rushing over
the threshhold.

“The schoolmaster—where is he?” exclaimed their leader, a burly ruffian,
with crape over his face, and a white belt across his breast. “Speak,
Gilbert!”

“The Spy!” echoed the deep voices of the Tories, as they waved their
torches, their rifles, and their knives, above their heads.

“Yes, Smoothspeech, where's the schoolmaster, and the purty robin his
daughter, Polly?” cried a voice which issued from a mass of carbuneled
face, which in its turn, surmounted by a huge form clad in scarlet. “A
hundred guineas for the lass, you know; eh, comrades?”

The answer of Gilbert was short and concise.

“In truth, it seems to me, the old man Mayland and his daughter Mary,
are even now in the cellar, attending to their household affairs!”

With one movement, the Tory Captain and his comrades rushed down
the stairway.

Gilbert approached the closet; a light, gleaming from the cellar below,
bathed his face in a red glare.

“He will emerge from the passage on the hillside, near the hay-stack,”
he muttered, while a demoniac look worked over his contracted face.—
“Fairer tombs have I seen—but none so warm!”

As he gazes down the narrow passage, the light from beneath, reddening
his face, while his slender form quivers with a death-like agony: Let us
go back through the vista of twenty years, and behold the boy gazing into
the darkness of the chasm, in search of his father's corse.

Who, in the cold-featured, stony-eyed Gilbert Gates, would recognize the
boy with laughing eyes and flowing hair?

The blaze of torches illumined the cellar.

Before a door of solid oak, which separated the cellar from the subterranean
passage, the Tories paused. Then deep-muttered oaths alone disturbed
the midnight silence.

“Quick—we have no time to lose—he is hidden in the underground
passage—let us force the door, before the people of the valley come to his
rescue!”

Thus speaking, the Tory leader, whose face was hidden beneath the folds
of crape, pointed with his sword towards a heavy billet of wood, which
laid on the hard clay of the cellar floor.

Four stalwart Tories seize it in their muscular grasp; they stand prepared
to dash the door from its hinges.

“One good blow and the Spy is ours!” shouts the Tory leader, with
an oath.

“And the guineas—don't forget the guineas, and the girl!” growled the
red-faced British Sergeant.

The torch-light fell over their faces, frenzied by intoxication and rage,
over their forms, clad in plain farmer's costume, with a belt across every
chest, a powder horn by each side.

And at this moment, as they stand ready to dash the door into fragments,
on the other side stands Mary, the peasant girl, her round white arm supplying
the place of bar and fastening. Yes, with the light in her extended
right arm, she gazes after the retreating form of her father, while her left
arm is placed through the staples, in place of the bar.

One blow, and the maiden's arm will be rent in fragments, even to the
shoulder, one blow, and over her crushed and trampled body, will be made
the pathway of the ravager and robber!

“Heaven, pity me! My father has not sufficient strength to roll the
rock from the mouth of the passage! I hear their voices—their threats—

they prepare to force the door, but I will foil them even yet! They shall
not pass to my father's heart, save over the dead body of his child!”

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the door, the four ruffians stood ready
with the billet of oak, in their iron grasp.

“Now!” shouted the Tory Captain, “one good blow, and it is done!”

They swayed the log slowly to and fro—it moved forward,—all the impulse
of their iron sinews concentrated in the effort—when a heavy body
fell from the narrow window of the cellar and beat the billet to the ground.

The curse of the Tory leader echoed through the vault.

In a moment, ere they could raise a hand, up from the darkness there
rose the form of a giant negro, bared to the waist, his broad chest heaving,
while his eyes rolled wildly in his inky face.

“Black Sampson!” growled the Tory. “Stand aside charcoal, or I'll
cut you down!”

“Look heah!” shouted the Negro, confronting the armed Tories with
his bared arms and breast, while his teeth grated convulsively. “Stan' off
—I say s-t-a-n' off! Ole Massa Maylan' kind to Sampson—gib him bread
when he hungry—med'cin' when he sick! Now you gwain to hurt de ole
man? I 'spose not, while Sampson hab an arm! Stan' off—I'm dangerous!”

And the black Hercules towered aloft, his sinews writhing, his teeth
clenched, his features—moulded with the aquiline contour of the Ashantee
race—quivering with rage.

There was a struggle—the gleam of arms—shouts and curses—yet still
the Negro beat them back—dashing their swords aside with his weaponless
hands.

Still, true to that wild fidelity—which burned in his savage heart like a
gleam from Heaven—he shouted his hoarse war-cry.

“De ole man kind to Sampson! 'Spose you hurt him? You mus' kill
dis nigga fust!”

Again he beat them back—but at last, by a simultaneous effort they bore
him to the earth.

At the same moment, the door flew open, and a shriek quivered through
the cellar.

“Saved—my father—saved!”

There, beneath the glare of the torches, lay the form of the fainting girl
—her bosom pulseless, her face as white as death.

“This way!” cried the Tory Captain. “We will secure the Spy first,
and then his daughter!”

They rushed after their leader—their shouts and cries, echoed far along
the passage.

In another moment, a light shone over the cellar and a man of some
twenty-six years, attired in the brown dress of a farmer, with blue eyes and
flaxen hair, advanced toward the unconscious girl.

“Here's a purty business!” he exclaimed, with a strong German accent
—“De nigga kilt, and Polly half dead!”

And thus speaking, honest Gotleib Hoff knelt before the unconscious
girl.

On the green slope, which arose from the school-master's home, toward
the woods, on the hill-top stood the strange being whom we have known as
the son of the Hunter-Spy, and the Pretended Quaker—Gilbert Gates.

Above him arched the universe of stars—around him, slumbered the
peaceful valley of Brandywine—within him, burned the tortures of a lost
soul.

In his talon-like fingers he crushed a much-worn paper; it had been
pinned to the dead man's breast some twenty years ago.

There were cold drops of sweat upon his brow; he trembled from his
heart to his finger ends.

“They are on his track, the dupes, the tools of my vengeance! Mine—
mine—father and daughter, both mine! For him a death of horror—for
her a life of shame! Hah! I hear their shouts—they pursue him to the
death!”

As he spoke, a long column of light was flung over the green sward
where he stood, as if from the bosom of the earth. A huge rock was rolled
from the mouth of the mound, and the shouts and yells of the ruffian band
swelled on the air.

A figure sprang from the shelter of the mound—a weak and aged man—
his attire covered with earth, and torn in fragments—his blue eyes, wandering
in their glance, his grey hairs tossing to the impulse of the night breeze.

As he sprung out upon the sod, he muttered the name of God:

“It is hard for an old man like me to be hunted to death like a mad dog!
Let me see, which way shall I turn? I must take to the woods!”

“Nay, friend Mayland, nay,” said a mild and conciliating voice: “Thee
has never trusted in me, yet now will I save thy life. Not to the woods,
for the bloodhounds are too near; in truth they are. But to the hay-stack!
Behold this cavity, which I have made to conceal thee, amid this pile of
hay!”

“Gilbert Gates!” cried the old man, starting back. “I trust you not—
there is Traitor written on your face!”

“Hark! Does thee hear the shouts of thee pursuers? `Death, death
to Mayland the Spy!' Will thee trust to them?”

“To the hay-stack be it, then!” cried the bewildered old man; “Bless
me, what does this mean? A hole hollowed out in the centre of the stack!”

“I'll tell thee when thou art saved!” cried Gilbert, with his peculiar
smile. “In, friend Mayland, in! They will never suspect thee hiding-place—I
will conceal it with this loose hay!”

In a moment Jacob Mayland disappeared, while Gilbert Gates stood alone
in the centre of the sward.

The hay-stack, round, compact and uniform in appearance, rose darkly
in the dim light of the stars. Within its centre, cramped, confined, scarce
able to breathe, crouched Jacob Mayland, the one-armed schoolmaster.

A shout from the mound, a flash of light, and some twenty forms leap
one by one, from the mouth of the passage.

“Ha! Gilbert Gates!” shouted the Tory leader—“which way went
they spy?”

“To the woods! to the woods!” cried Gilbert, as his sharp features
glowed in the light of twenty torches.

“Look, you smooth-speech!” cried the huge British Sergeant, stumbling
forward—“I don't trust you. Your broad-brimmed hat don't hide your
villainous face. By—, I believe you've helped this Spy to escape!”

A hoarse murmur arose from the bravoes, who with ominous looks, came
grouping round the False Quaker.

“Now, friend Hamsdroff, do not get into a passion,” said Gilbert, in his
mildest tones—“or if thee does get into a passion, I beseech—' his face
assumed an expression which, in its mingled mildness and hatred, chilled
even the drunken Sergeant to the heart—“do not, I beseech thee, fire the
poor man's hay-stack!”

“Ha, ha! Won't I though?” shouted the Sergeant. “The old fox
has escaped, but we'll burn his nest!”

He seized a torch and dashed it along the hay.

“Fire the hay-stack, my boys!” shouted the tory leader: “Fire the
hay-stack, every man of you! Burn the rebel out of house and home!”

As you look, twelve of the band rush forward and encircle the hay-stack
with a belt of flame. Another moment—a sudden breeze from the forest—
the hay-stack glows from the sward a mass of living flame.

The fire whizzed, and crackled, and hissed, winding around the cone of
hay, and shooting in one long column, into the midnight sky. Abroad over
the meadow, abroad over the forest, crimsoning each leaf with a blood-red
glow, high and higher, fierce and madder, it whirled and rose, that column
of flame.

Now the Tories, half in rage and half in drunken joy, mingled hand in
hand, and danced around the burning pile.

“Hurrah for King George!” shouted the Sergeant, leaping from the
ground. “Death to all Rebels!”

“So perish all rebels!” echoed the Tories.

And higher and higher rose the flame.

Up to the heavens, paling the stars with its burning red—over the green
of the meadows—down upon the waters of the Brandywine—up the hill-side—along
the woods, it rose, that merry flame!

As in the blaze of noonday, lay the level sward, the grey stone house of
the schoolmaster, the frame barn with its fences and outhouses—while
around the burning pile, merrier and gayer danced the soldiers, flinging their

swords in the blood-red light, and sending the name of the Good King
George to the skies!

Retired in the background, some few yards from the burning stack, his
arms folded on his breast, his head turned to one side, stood Gilbert Gates,
the Son of the Hunter-Spy. A smile on his pinched lips, a cold gleam in
his eye.

“Fire the house!” shouted the Tory leader.

They turned to fire the house, but a low, moaning sound broke on the
air—it caused the troopers, brutal as they were, to start with horror. The
leader of the Tories wheeled suddenly round bending his head to catch the
slightest whisper; the face of the Sergeant grew white as his sword
belt.

That low, moaning sound swelled to a shriek—a shriek that curdled their
blood. It came from the bosom of the burning hay-stack—along the breeze
it yelled, and died away. Another shriek and another! Three sounds
more horrible never broke on the ears of man. In a moment all was still
as death—the hay-stack crashed down with a deadened sound. Nothing
was left but a pile of smouldering embers. All was still as death, but a dim
object moved amid the last remains of the burning hay—moved, struggled,
and was still.

For the last time, the flame glared into the midnight sky.

Disclosed by that red glare, stood Gilbert Gates, perusing the crushed
paper which he grasped in his talon-fingers.

These are the words which he read by the glare of the hay-stack, words
written in a cramped hand—perhaps in blood—and dated more than twenty
years before this, September day in 1777:

Jacob Mayland.”

“He died alone in the wild woods—and I—his son, and his avenger!”

With these words, the son of the Hunter-Spy passed behind the barn,
and was lost to sight.

And from the accursed pile of death fled the soldiers, spurring their horses
to their utmost speed—with the fear and horror of coward guilt they fled—
while far over the plain, far over the valley, came the men of Brandywine,
roused from their sleep by the burning hay-stack. Yes, from the hill-top
and valley they came, as the last embers of the fire were yet glowing on
the green sward.

And two figures emerged from the door of the schoolmaster's house, the
form of a stout and muscular man, and the form of a trembling maiden.

“Gotlieb, it seems like a dream,” said the maiden. “The flight of my
father, the chase in the passage—the swoon! Thank God, my father has
escaped! But what means this sudden stillness—yon flickering fire?”

They reached the burning embers on the hill-side and stood for a moment
gazing upon the scene.

A mass of burning hay, a pile of ashes, the wreck of some splintered
boards, were all that remained to tell of the location of the hay-stack.

“What is that dark thing in the fire?” exclaimed Mary Mayland—
“Quick, Gotlieb—hold the light nearer—it seems to move, to stir!”

Gotlieb held the light over the darkened mass. Here let me pause for a
single moment.

You may charge me with painting horrors that never existed.

And yet there is not a hill or a valley in any one of the old Thirteen
States unstained with the blood of peaceful men, shed by the hirelings of
King George.

Not only on the soil of Brandywine, but in a quiet home of Germantown,
was a deed similar to the one in question, committed by American Tories
and their British brethren.

An old man burned to death in cold blood by the soldiers of King George:
it is horrible, but having occurred in the course of that beautiful game of
War, which Kings and Tyrants have played for some four thousand years;
let us write it down, aye, in its darkest and bloodiest details, so that the
children of our day may know the features of Civil War.

War has been painted too long as a pretty thing, spangled with buttons,
fluttering with ribbons, waving with plumes.

Let us learn to look upon it as it is; a horrible bandit, reeking with the
blood of the innocent, the knife of murder in his hand, the fire of carnage
in his eye.

The war which Washington waged, was not war, in the proper sense of
the term. It was only the defence of one's hearthside against the robber
and murderer.

But of all the hideous murders which have been done, for two thousand
years, the war waged by the British King, against the American People,
was the foulest, the dastardliest, the bloodiest.

It was a massacre of eight years, beginning to kill at Bunker Hill, and
ending its work of butchery, only when it was crushed at Yorktown.

Let no mawkish sympathy for Great Britain shake this truth from our
souls. The Englishman we do not hate; he is the countryman of Shakspeare
and Milton, he is our brother.

But it will take a thousand years of good deeds to wash from the History
of England, the horrid and merciless butcheries which she perpetrated in
the Eight Years' War.

To forgive these crimes is our duty, but to forget them —

Can a child forget the wretch who butchered his mother?

Why, at the thought, the dead of our battlefields bleed again—aye, from
the shades of Mount Vernon, armed for the combat, starts the solemn ghost
of Washington!

Let us follow this tragedy to the end, and at the same time, remember—it
is only one among a thousand.

Gotlieb held the light over the darkened mass.

Yes, while the men of Brandywine formed a circle about the scene,
grouping around the form of the farmer and the maiden, the light streamed
over that hideous object among the embers.

Mary, the daughter advanced, her face glowing mildly in the light, advanced
and—looked—

—There are some sights which it is blasphemy to paint, and this is one
of them!—

Some Angel of Mercy, at the sight, took from her sense and consciousness.
She fell: her white hands outstretched, touched the mangled form of her
father.

Then one groan heaving from an hundred hearts, swelled on the air.

A dark form came rushing to the scene; breasting the spectators aside,
Sampson, the Giant Negro stood there, gazing upon the horrid mass at
his feet.

And he knelt there, and his lips moved, and murmured a vow—not in
English—but in his wild Ashantee tongue. A heathen, with but an imperfect
notion of the Christian Truth, dragged from his native land into
slavery when but a child, the son of a savage king, he murmured above
the old man's skeleton his horrible vow, devoting the murderers to his
Moloch God.

How that vow was kept let the records of Brandywine witness!

At the moment while stout Gotlieb, appalled and stricken into stone, stood
holding the light over the dead—as Mary, pale and beautiful, lay beside
that which was her father, only an hour ago—as the huge negro bent above
the witness of murder, his sinews quivering, lips clenched and eyes glaring,
as he took the vow—at this moment, while the spectators stood alternately
melted into tears and frozen into the dead apathy of horror.—

There came a peaceful man, gliding silently through the crowd, his bosom
trembling with deep compassion, his eyes wet with tears.

“Ah, this is a terrible thing!” said a tremulous voice—“In truth is it!”

And the Son of the Hunter-Spy stood gazing on the miserable remains
of his Father's Executioner.

XVII.—BLACK SAMPSON.

How beautiful in yonder graveyard, the wild flowers bloom, above the
Mother's grave!

Fond hopes are buried here, yes, beneath the rank grass and the dark
mould, a true heart that once throbbed with the pulsations of that passion
which is most like Heaven—a Mother's Love—moulders into dust.

And yet from the very rankness of the mould, that encloses the Mother's
form, from the very eyes and skull of Death, fair flowers bloom beautifully
into light, and with their fragrance sanctify the graveyard air.

So from the very blood and horror of the battle-field, many a tender
virtue is born, yes, from the carnage which floods the green meadow with
the life-current of a thousand hearts, many a god-like heroism springs
gloriously into life.

War is the parent of many virtues. Not Invading War, which attracts
ten thousand crimes with its blood-red sword, and fills the land with the
dead bodies of its children. No! Invading War is the Vulture of the
Andes, gorgeous in its plumage, bloody and merciless in its hatred, loathsome
in its appetite. It feeds only on the bodies of the dead.

But War for Home, and for Home's holiest altar, honest war waged with
a sword, that is taken from its resting place above the poor man's hearth,
and sanctified with the tears of his wife. War that is fought beneath a
clear sky, on a native soil, with the eyes of angels watching all the while;
this is a holy thing in the sight of Heaven.

From such a war, fought on the Continent of America, during the long
course of Eight years, and extending its battle-field from the rock of Quebec
to the meadows of Savannah, a thousand unknown virtues rushed into
birth.

I speak not now, of the sublime virtue of Washington, the heroism of La
Fayette, the wild energy of Anthony Wayne. No! The hero whose
savage virtue is yet recorded in every blade of grass, that waves above the
field of Brandywine, was a poor man. A very humble man who had toiled
from dawn until dusk, with the axe or spade. A rude man withal, who
made his home in a miserable hut, yet still a Hero!

The virtue that he cherished was a savage virtue, meaning in plain words,
Fidelity unto Death and after Death, yet still a virtue.

Start not when I tell you, that this hero was—a Negro! His hair
crisped into wool, his skin blackened to the hue of ink, by the fiery sun of
his clime and race, his hands harsh and bony with iron toil.

He was a Negro and yet a Hero!

Do not mistake me. I am no factionist, vowed to the madness of treason,
under the sounding name of—Humanity. I have no sympathy—no scorn
—nothing but pity for those miserably deluded men, who in order to free
the African race, would lay unholy hands upon the American Union.

That American Union is a holy thing to me. It was baptized some
seventy years ago, in a river of sacred blood. For that Union thousands
of brave men left their homes, their wives, all that man holds dear in order
to die, amid ice and snows, the shock of battles, the dishonor of gibbets.
No one can count the tears, the prayers, the lives, that have sanctified this
American Union, making it an eternal bond of brotherhood for innumerable
millions, an altar forever sacred to the Rights of Man. For seventy years
and more, the Smile of God has beamed upon it. The man that for any
pretence, would lay a finger upon one of its pillars, not only blasphemes
the memory of the dead, but invokes upon his name the Curse of all ages

yet to come. I care not how plausible his argument, how swelling his
sounding periods, how profuse his `sympathy for suffering humanity,'
that man is a Traitor to the soil that bore him, a Traitor to the mother
whose breast gave him nourishment, a Traitor to the Dead, whose very
graves abhor the pollution of his footsteps.

All that such a person can plead in extenuation, is the miserable excuse
of cowardice combined with folly. Arnold was a hero, a man of genius,
although a Traitor. The man who would taint with one unhallowed word
the sanctity of THE Union, stands arrayed in the leprosy of Arnold's
Treason, without one redeeming ray of his heroism, one spark of his
genius.

For the American Union is to Political Freedom, what the Bible is to
Religious Hope. There may be differences of opinion in relation to the
sacred volume, various creeds may spring from misconstruction of its pages,
defects of translation may mar the sublimest of its beauties.

Would you therefore blot the Bible from the earth? Give us a better, a
holier book, before you take this from our homes and hearts!

So the American Union may be the object of honest differences of opinion;
it may be liable to misinterpretation, or be darkened by the smoke of
conflicting creeds; yes, it may shelter black slavery in the south, and white
slavery in the north.

Would you therefore destroy it? Give us a better, a holier Union, before
you sweep this into chaos!

With this protest against every illegitimate creation of a feverish philanthrophy,
whether it takes the shape of affection for the suffering African, or
—like the valorous bull who contended with the steam engine—pitches with
head down, eyes closed, horns erect, against the Happiness of Millions, let
me turn to my hero. A negro Hero, with hair like wool, skin as black
as ink.

Against the porch of the murdered Schoolmaster's home, just before the
break of day, on the Eleventh of September, 1777, there leaned the figure
of a tall and muscular man.

You can see him yonder through the dimness of the day-break hour, resting
with bent arms against the railing of the porch. His attire is very
simple; rough coat and trowsers of plain homespun, yet through their loose
folds, you can discern the outlines of a noble, yes, magnificent form.

It is not his form however, with its breadth of chest, its sinewy arms, its
towering height, or Herculean outline of iron strength, that arrests your
attention.

His head placed erect upon his shoulders, by a firm bold neck. His face
with its unmistakable clearness of outline. The brow full and prominent,
the nose aquiline with slight and tremulous nostrils, the lips not remarkable

for thickness, set together with a firm pressure, the chin square and bold,
the cheek-bones high and angular.

And yet he is a Negro, and yet he has been a slave!

A Negro, without the peculiar conformation, which marks whole tribes
of his race. Neither thick lips, flat nose, receding chin or forehead, are
his. He stands in the dimness of this hour, a type of the war-like Ashantee
race, whose forms remind you at once of Apollo and Hercules, hewn
from a solid mass of anthracite—black in hue yet bold in outline, vigorous in
the proportions of each manly limb.

Black Sampson—so they called him—stood leaning against the porch of
his murdered master's home, while around him, certain white objects arose
prominently in the dim air, and a vague murmur swelled above the meadow
of the Brandywine.

These white objects were the tents of the Continential Encampment,
stretching over the valley afar. That murmur was the omen of a terrible
event. It meant that brave men, with stout hearts in their bosoms, were
sharpening their swords, examining their rifles, and eating their last meal
before the battle.

But Sampson looked not upon the white tents, nor heard the murmur.
Nor did he gaze upon a space of earth, some few paces up the hill-side,
where a circle had been described on the soft sward, by the action of fire.

There, the night before last, his friend, his master, the veteran who had
served with Washington in Braddock's war, had been—burned to death.

Nor did the eye of Black Sampson, rest upon a rude hut, which you can
see, down the meadow yonder, half way between the stream, and the foot
of the hill. That was Black Sampson's home—there, when sick and at
death's door, he had been fed by the old schoolmaster, and there, his dreams
of Pagan Superstition had been broken by the prayers of the schoolmaster's
child.

Sampson's thoughts were neither with the murdered man and his blue-eyed
daughter, nor with the army whose murmur swelled around.

No! Gathering his coarse garb, to his breast, he folded his arms, and
talked to himself.

Now you will understand me, this Negro, could not speak ten clear
words of our English tongue. He could not master the harsh elements of
our northern language. But when he thought, it was in the musical syllables
of his native Ashantee: shall we translate his thoughts into English?

“Years—years—O, years of horrible torture, how ye glide away!
Back into my native land again—the land of the desert and the sun, the
land of the Lion and the Tiger,—back once more into my father's kraal!
Yonder it stands among those trees, with the large green leaves, and many
colored birds upon each bough! Yonder by the deep river, whose waves
are white with lillies—yonder beneath the shadow of the palm, yonder
with its roof, evergreen with vines!

“And my father is here! Yes, with his people and his children round
him, he sits before his palace gate, gold bracelets on his wrists, the iron
spear in his hand, a chain of diamonds and pearls about his neck. But
Ka-Loloo, the king of the Ashantee has grown old; he mourns for his son
—his son, who was stolen away, long years—ah, long, long years ago by
the pale face! Look! The old man weeps—he loved that son—see! the
rays of the setting sun light up his aged brow—he weeps! His people in
vain attempt to comfort him. “My son, my son,” he cries, “who shall
lead the Ashantees to battle, when I am gathered to the Kroal of the dead?”
So speaks Ka-Loloo king of the Ashantees, sitting with his people round
him at his palace gate!”

—Laugh if you please, at these strange memories of the Negro, but I assure
you, there were tears in the rude fellows eyes, even as he stood there leaning
against the porch.

For his Father was a King—he was the Prince of three thousand warriors—he,
whose native name was now lost in the cognomen, Black
Sampson—had been sold from his home into slavery.

The People of the valley of Brandywine knew but little about him.
About five years ago, he had appeared in the valley, a miserable skeleton,
covered from head to foot with scars. It was supposed that he was a slave
from the far south. No one asked his history, but the old veteran, even
Jacob Mayland, gave him a home. Therefore, Black Sampson clung to
the memory of his murdered master with all his soul.

The day began to dawn; light clouds floating over the eastern horizon,
saw the sun approach, and caught his golden smile upon their snowy
breasts.

It was at this hour, that Black Sampson, leaning against the porch of the
murdered man's home, beheld a strange figure come slowly over the sward,
toward him.

Was it a Ghost? So strangely beautiful, with those white feet, pressing
the soft grass, taht flowing brown hair sweeping over the bared arms?

At a second glance, he recognized the daughter of the schoolmaster, warm
and lovable and bewitching Mary Mayland, whom Gotlieb Hoff, the rough
farmer loved with all his heart.

Warm and lovable and bewitching no longer! For she came with her
blue eyes fixed and glassy—she came, clad in her night dress as a shroud
—she came, the image of a Woman, whose dearest hope has all at once
been wrecked, whose life has suddenly been transformed from a garden of
virgin hopes, into a desert of blasted ashes.

Sampson was a Negro—a rude man, who had an imperfect idea of the
Blessed Saviour, mingling His Religion with the dreams of Pagan superstition—and
yet, as he beheld this pale girl come slowly toward him, with
her white arms folded over her almost pulseless bosom, he, the black man,
shuddered.

Still the young woman came on, and stood before him—a miserable wreck
—telling in her mad way, the story of her unutterable wrong. She did
not see Sampson, for her glassy eyes looked on the vacant air, but still she
told her story, making the honest negro's blood run cold in his veins.

—The night before she had been lured from her home, and —. The
story cannot be told. All that we can know is, that she stands before us, in
the light of the breaking day, a mad and ruined girl. In her ravings—oh,
that name is too harsh! In her mild, deep voice, she told the story of her
wrong, and murmured the name of Gilbert Gates, and the name of a British
officer.

You can see Sampson start forward, gather her gently in his rude arms,
and place her quietly on the seat of the porch.

“Dis am berry bad, Missa Polly—” he said, and you will remember that
he spoke very uncouth English—“Enuf to break a nigga's heart! And
dey took you from yer home, and —”

The negro did not utter another word, for he saw the stout form of Gotlieb
Hoff coming briskly over the sod, a rifle on his shoulder, an oaken sprig
in the band of his hat. Gotlieb whistled gaily as he came, his light curling
hair waving about his ruddy face.

He did not dream of the agony in store for him.

And while he came, the poor girl sat on the porch of her Home, folding
her white arms over her bosom, and muttering in that low deep voice, the
story of her wrong.

The negro Black Sampson, could not endure the sight. Even as Gotlieb
came gaily on, the black man bounded from the porch, and hastened toward
yonder barn.

If he—the negro—turned away from the agony of this meeting between
the Plighted Husband and his Ruined Bride, shall we take hearts of stone
to our bosoms, and gaze upon the horror of that interview?

Black Sampson approached the barn whose walls of logs you see piled
up yonder, on the side of the hill.

He opened a narrow door and called for his dog. The dog bounded
forth, a noble animal, in shape something like the kingly dogs of St.
Bernard, yet white as the driven snow. He came with fierce eyes and
formidable teeth, ears and head erect, and crouched low at his master's
feet.

Then Sampson entered the barn, and in a moment appeared, holding a
scythe in his right arm. He wound one arm around the handle, and with
the fingers of his other hand, tested the sharpness of the edge.

Then a low, deep, yet unnatural chuckle passed the African's lips.

“Look heah, Debbil—” that was the name of his dog—“Hah, yah!
Sampson am gwain a-mowin' dis day!”

The dog darted up, as with mingled rage and joy.

You will admit that Sampson's movements are peculiar. In order to

understand this strange magnetic sympathy between the master and the dog,
let us follow Sampson's steps into the barn.

He flings open the large door, and by the dim morning light you behold
a strange object in the centre of the threshing floor among heaps of straw.

Is it a man, or an image?

It is a British uniform, stuffed with straw and glittering with epaulettes
of gold. There is a gay chapeau placed on the shoulders of the figure,
military boots upon its legs.

The moment that `Debbil' beholds it, he howls with ungovernable rage,
displays his teeth, and shoots fire from his eyes.

But Sampson holds him by the collar, talking merrily to him all the
while —

“Look heah Debbil, we am gwain a-mowin' dis day! De ye know
what we gwain to mow? I tells ye. De night afore last, de dam British,
dey burn your Massa alive—d'ye hear dat, ye stupid Debbil? Dis berry
hour dey abuse your young Missus—you understand me Debbil? Dat's
de reason we am gwain a-mowin'! Dat is! An' whenebber ye see anyting
like dat Debbil—” pointing to the figure—“Den at 'em trote, and lap
um blood!”

He loosed the collar of the Dog and suffered him to go.

—You hear a deep howl, you see the dog spring forward. Look! His
teeth are fixed in the throat of the figure; he tears it, drags it, crushes it in
his rage, while Black Sampson stands laughing by.

Laughing a low, deep laugh, that has something else than mirth in its tone.

“Dat's de way we am gwain a-mowin' dis day!”

He turned from the barn followed by the spotless dog. He stood amid
the cinders of the burned haystack, where his master had died in bitter
agony the night before last.

Then, while the armies were mustering for the conflict, while over the
valley of the Brandywine the Continentals formed in columns, their starry
banner waving overhead, while on yonder porch Gotlieb listens to the story
of the veteran's child, here, on this circle of withered grass, Black Sampson
prepared for battle.

The manner of his preparation was singular.

The sun came on—the gleam of British arms shine on the opposite hills
—the battle was about to commence its Liturgy of yells and groans, yet
still Sampson stood there, in the centre of the blasted circle.

On the very spot where the veteran's bones had laid, he stood.

Muttering again that terrible oath of vengeance to his Moloch God, he
first stripped from his form his coat of coarse homespun. Then, with his
broad, black chest glittering in the sunlight, he wound his right arm around
the handle of his scythe.

He laid the other hand upon the head of his dog. His eye gleamed with
deadly light.

Thus, scythe in hand, his dog by his side, his form, in all its herculean
proportion, bared to the waist, Black Sampson stood prepared for battle.

Look yonder over the valley! Behold that sweep of level meadow, that
rippling stream of water. On these eastern hills, you see the men of Mad
Anthony Wayne, ranged in battle-order. Yonder, from the western woods,
the gleam of Kniphausen's arms, shoots gaily over the leaves,

Suddenly there is a sound like thunder, then white columns of smoke,
then a noise of trampling hoofs.

Black Sampson hears that thunder and quivers from head to foot. He
sees the white smoke, and lifts his scythe. The trampling hoofs he hears,
and speaks to his dog—“Debbil, dis day we am gwain a-mowin'!”

But then, through the clamor of battle, there comes a long and ringing
cry. It is the battle-shout of Anthony Wayne.

Black Sampson hears it, darts forward, and with his dog by his side,
rushes into the folds of the battle-smoke.

You see him yonder, far down the valley, you see him yonder, in the
midst of the stream; now he is gone among the clouds, now he comes forth
again, now the whirlpool of battle shuts him in. Still the white dog is by
his side, still that scythe gleams aloft. Does it fall?

At last, yonder on the banks of the Brandywine, where a gush of sunlight
pours through the battle-clouds, you see Black Sampson stand. A strange
change has passed over himself, his scythe, his dog. All have changed
color. The color they wear is a fiery red—look! You can see it drip
from the scythe, crimson Sampson's chest and arms, and stain with gory
patches, the white fur of his dog.

And the word that Sampson said, as he patted his noble dog, was something
like this:

“Dat counts one for Massa!”

Had the scythe fallen? Had the dog hunted his game?

Through the entire battle of Brandywine, which began at break of day,
and spent its last shot when the night set in, and the stars came smiling out
upon the scene of murder, that Black Hercules was seen, companioned by
his white dog, the sharp scythe flashing in dazzling circles above his head.

On the plain or meadow, extending in a lake of verdure where the battle
begun; four miles away in the graveyard of the Quaker Meeting house,
where thousands of contending foemen, fought until the sod was slippery
with blood; at noon, at night, always rushing forward that Negro was seen,
armed only with a sharp scythe, his only comrade a white dog, spotted
with flakes of blood.

And the war-cry that he ever shouted, was in his rude way—

“Dat counts one for Massa, Debbil!”

Whenever he said this, the dog howled, and there was another mangled
corse upon the ground.

The British soldiers saw him come—his broad black chest gleaming in
the sun—his strange weapon glittering overhead—his white dog yelling by
his side, and as they looked they felt their hearts grow cold, and turned
from his path with fear. Yes fear, for with a superstition not unnatural,
they thought they beheld, not a warrior armed for the fight, but a Demon,
created by the horror of battle, rushing on with the fiend-animal by his
side.

Many a British throat that had been fondly pressed by the hands of
mother, wife, or sister, that day felt the teeth of the white dog! Many a
British eye that had gazed undismayed into the muzzle of American cannon,
quailed with involuntary cowardice at the sight of that circling scythe.
Many a British heart that had often beat with mad pulsations, in the hour
when American homes had been desolated, American fathers murdered,
American mothers outraged, that day lay cold in the bosom which was
pressed by the foot of Black Sampson, the Prince of the Ashantee.

Do not impute to me a morbid appetite for scenes of blood. I might
pourtray to you in all their horrors, the several deaths of the murderers of
Jacob Mayland, the veteran of Braddock's war. How this one was hurled
from his horse by the white dog, while the scythe of Sampson performed
its terrible office. How another, pursuing the Americans at the head of
his men, uttered the shout of victory, and then heard the howl of the dog
and died. How a third gentleman, while in the act of listening to my Lord
Cornwallis, (who always went out to murder in clean ruffles and a wig,
perfumed with Marechale powder,) was startled by the apparition of a
giant negro, a whirling scythe, a white dog crimsoned with blood, and how
when he saw this apparition a moment only, he never saw or felt anything
more.

But I will not do it. My only object is to impress upon your minds,
my friends—for sitting alone in my room, with but this pen in my hand, I
can talk to you all; you, the half-a-million readers of this page and call you
friends—the idea of Black Sampson's conduct, his religion, his ruling
motive.

It was this: The old man Mayland and his daughter, had been very
kind to him. To them in his rude negro heart, he had sworn eternal
fidelity. In his rude African religion, to revenge the death of a friend,
was not only a duty, but a solemn injunction from the lips of the dead.

Therefore arming himself but with a scythe, he called his dog, and went
out to hunt Englishmen, as he had often hunted wild beasts.

Pass we then the carnage of that fearful day.

It was in the calm of twilight, when that sweet valley of Brandywine
looks as lovely as a young bride, trembling on the threshold of the Bridal
Chamber—a blushing, joyous, solemn thing, half-light, half-shadow—that a
rude figure stumbled into a room, where a dead woman lay.

It was in a house near Dilworth corner, one or two miles from the battle-field
of the meeting house.

A quiet chamber filled with silent people, with hushed breath and deeply
saddened faces, and the softened glow of a glorious sunset pouring through
the closed curtains of yonder window.

Those people gathered round a bed, whose snow-white coverlet caught a
flush of gold from the setting sun. Stout men were in that crowd, men
who had done brave work in that day's battle, and tender girls who were
looking forward with hope to a future life of calm, home-born joys, and
aged matrons, who had counted the years of their lives by the burial of dear
friends. These all were there.

And there at the foot of the bed, stood a man in the dress of a farmer, his
frank honest face, stained with blood, his curling hair curling no longer, but
stiffened with clotted gore. He had been in battle, Gotlieb Hoff striving
earnestly to do some justice on these British spoilers, and now at the evening
hour—after scenes that I may picture at some future time—came to
look upon the burden of that bed.

It was no wonder that honest Gotlieb muttered certain mad sentences, in
broken English, as he gazed upon this sight.

For believe me had you been there, you would have felt your senses
gliding from you at that vision. It was indeed, a pitiful sight.

She looked so beautiful as she lay there upon the bed. The hands that
were gently clasped, and the bosom that had heaved its last throb, and the
closed eyelids that were never to open more, and — you see they wept
there, all of them, for she looked so sadly beautiful as she lay dead, even
Mary sweet gentle lovable Mary, with the waving brown hair and the
laughing blue eyes.

She was dead now. About the hour of noon when the battle raged most
horribly, the last chord of her brain snapt, and on the altar of her outraged
life the last fire went out. She was dead, and O, she wore the saddest,
sweetest smile about her young face as she lay there, that you ever saw.

That was what made them weep. To have looked stiff and cold and
dismal, would have seemed more like Death, but to smile thus upon them
all, when her honor, her reason, her life, had all in one hour been trampled
into nothingness, to smile thus peacefully and forgivingly as she lay dead,
in her simple night-dress—ah! It cut every heart with a sudden sharp
pain, and made the eyes overflow with bitter tears.

I have said that a rude figure stumbled into a room, where a dead
woman lay.

Yes, in the very moment when the last ray of the sun—that never more
should rise upon the dead girl—was kissing her closed lids as if in pity,
there came a rude figure, breasting his way through the spectators.

Black and grim—almost horrible to look upon—bleeding from many
wounds, the scythe in his hand, Sampson stood there. He looked long and

fixedly upon the dead girl. They could see a tremulous motion at his
nostrils, a convulsive quivering about his mouth.

At last with an oath—and O, forgive it kind Heaven, for it was but
sworn to hide the sincere feeling of his heart—he laid his hand upon the
head of the dog, which had crept silently to his side, and told the faithful
animal —

“Debbil you am a rale brute, and no mistake! Dars Missa Maylan'
layin' dead—stone dead—she dat feed you and your Massa, many a hunder
time—and you no cry one dam' tear!”

Two large tears rolled down his face as he spoke, and the last sunbeam
kissed the eyelids of the dead girl, and was gone.

Some three or four years since, a ploughshare that upturned the soil
where a forest had stood in the Revolution, uncovered the grave of some
unknown man. In that grave were discovered the skeleton of a human being,
the bones of an animal, and the rusted and blood-clotted blade of a scythe.

Did the hand of the Avenger ever strike the tinselled wretch who had
crushed into dishonor, the peasant-girl of Brandywine?

Even in the presence of Washington, while encircling the Chieftain with
British soldiers he fell, stricken down by the quiet Gilbert Gates, who whispered
in his freezing ear “Thou didst dishonor her—thou, that hadst no
father's blood to avenge!”

As the handsome Captain writhed in the dust—Washington amazed, the
British soldiers maddened by the sight—the pretended Quaker true to his
instinct of falsehood, whispered to the one, “Washington I have saved
thee!” and to the others—“Behold the order of friend Cornwallis, commanding
this deed!”

Need we gaze upon the fate of this strange man, Gilbert Gates the Son
of the Hunter-Spy? His crimes, his oath, his life, were all dyed with innocent
blood, but the last scene which closed the page of this world to him
forever, is too dark and bloody to be told.

In a dim nook of the woods of Brandywine, two vigorous hickory trees
bending over a pool of water, in opposite directions, had been forced by
strong cords together, and firmly joined into one. Those cords once
separated—the knot which combined them once untied—it was plainly to
be seen that the hickory trees would spring back to their natural position,
with a terrific rebound.

The knot was untied by a rifle-ball. But the moment, ere the trees
sprung apart with a sound like thunder, you might see a human form lashed
by the arms and limbs, to their separate branches.

It was the form of Gilbert Gates, the Son of the Hunter-Spy. The ball
that untied the knot, was sped from the rifle of Gotlieb Hoff, the plighted
husband of the dishonored girl.

We have followed to its end, the strange and varied career of Gilbert
Gates, the False Quaker of Brandywine. Now let us look upon a Friend
of another kind. The day before the battle, there stood in the shadows
of the forest, at a point where two roads met, a man of some fifty-eight
years, one hand resting on the bridle-rein of his well-fed nag, and the other
pressed against his massive brow. He was clad in the Quaker dress. A
man of almost giant stature, his muscular limbs clad in sober drab, his
ruddy face and snow-white hairs crowned by a broad-rimmed hat. The
leaves formed a canopy above his head, as he stood wrapped in deep and
exciting thoughts, while his sleek, black horse—a long known and favorite
animal—bending his neck, cropped the fragrant wild grass at his feet.

The stout Quaker felt the throes of a strange mental contest quivering
through his veins. The father butchered by his hearthstone, the mother dishonored
in the presence of her children, the home in flames, and the hearth a
Golgotha—these are not very Christian sights, and yet the old Quaker had
seen them all. And now with his heart torn by the contest between his
principles and his impulses,—his principles were `Peace!', his impulses
shrieked `Washington!'—he had come here to the silent woods to think
the matter over. He wished to shoulder a rifle in the Army of freedom,
but the principles of his life and creed forbade the thought. After much
thought, and it must be said, severe though silent Prayer, the stout Quaker
resolved to test the question by a resort to the ancient method of ordeal or
lottery. “Now,” said he, as the sunlight played with his white hairs—“I
stand here, alone in the woods, where two roads meet. I will turn my favorite
horse, even Billy, loose, to go wherever he pleaseth. If he takes the road
on the right, I will get me a rifle and join the Camp of Friend Washington.
But in case he takes the road on the left, I will even go home, and mind
my own business. Now, Billy, thee is free—go where it pleaseth thee—
and mind what thee's about!”

The loosened rein fell dangling on Billy's sleek neck. The patriotic
friend beheld him hesitate on the point where the two paths joined; he
saw him roll his large eyes lazily from side to side, and then slowly saunter
toward the road on the left—the `Home' road.

As quick as thought, the stout Quaker started forward, and gave the rein
almost imperceptible, but powerful inclination toward the `Washington
Road,' exclaiming in deprecatory tones—“Now thee stupid thing! I
verily thought thee had better sense!”

Whether the words or the sudden movement of the Quaker's hand,
worked a change in Billy's mind, we cannot tell, but certain it is, that while
the grave Friend, with his hands dropped by his side, calmly watched the
result, the sagacious horse changed his course, and entered the `Washington
road.'

“Verily, it is ordered so!” was the quiet ejaculation of the Quaker, as
he took his way to the camp of Washington. We need not say, that he
did a brave work in the battle of Brandywine.

XVIII.—THE MECHANIC HERO OF BRANDYWINE.

Near Dilworth corner, at the time of the Revolution, there stood a quiet
cottage, somewhat retired from the road, under the shade of a stout chesnut
tree. It was a quiet cottage, nestling away there in one corner of the forest
road, a dear home in the wilderness, with sloping roof, walls of dark grey
stone, and a casement hidden among vines and flowers.

On one side, amid an interval of the forest trees, was seen the rough
outline of a blacksmith's shop. There was a small garden in front, with a
brown gravelled walk, and beds of wild flowers.

Here, at the time of the Revolution, there dwelt a stout blacksmith, his
young wife and her babe.—What cared that blacksmith, working away there
in that shadowy nook of the forest, for war? What feared he for the peril
of the times, so long as his strong arm, ringing that hammer on the anvil,
might gain bread for his wife and child!

Ah, he cared little for war, he took little note of the panic that shook the
valley, when some few mornings before the battle of the Brandywine, while
shoeing the horse of a Tory Refugee, he overheard a plot for the surprise
and capture of Washington. The American leader was to be lured into the
toils of the tories; his person once in the British camp, the English General
might send the “Truitor Washington” home, to be tried in London.

Now our blacksmith, working away there, in that dim nook of the forest,
without caring for battle or war, had still a sneaking kindness for this Mister
Washington, whose name rung on the lips of all men. So one night, bidding
his young wife a hasty good-bye, and kissing the babe that reposed on
her bosom, smiling as it slept, he hurried away to the American camp, and
told his story to Washington.

It was morning ere he came back. It was in the dimness of the autumnal
morning, that the blacksmith was plodding his way, along the forest
road. Some few paces ahead there was an aged oak, standing out into the
road—a grim old veteran of the forest, that had stood the shocks of three
hundred years. Right beyond that oak was the blacksmith's home.

With this thought warming his heart, he hurried on. He hurried on,
thinking of the calm young face and mild blue eyes of that wife, who, the
night before, had stood in the cottage door, waving him out of sight with a
beckoned good-bye—thinking of the baby, that lay smiling as it slept upon
her bosom, he hurried on—he turned the bend of the wood, he looked upon
his home.

Ah! what a sight was there!

Where, the night before, he had left a peaceful cottage, smiling under a
green chesnut tree, in the light of the setting sun, now was only a heap of
black and smoking embers and a burnt and blasted tree!

This was his home!

And there stood the blacksmith gazing upon that wreck of his hearth-stone;—there
he stood with folded arms and moody brow, but in a moment
a smile broke over his face.

He saw it all. In the night his home had taken fire, and been burned to
cinders. But his wife, his child had escaped. For that he thanked God.

With the toil of his stout arm, plying there on the anvil, he would build
a fairer home for wife and child; fresh flowers should bloom over the
garden walks, and more lovely vines trail along the casement.

With this resolve kindling over his face, the blacksmith stood there, with
a cheerful light beaming from his large grey eyes, when—a hand was
laid upon his shoulder.

He turned and beheld the face of a neighbor.

It was a neighbor's face; but there was an awful agony stamping those
plain features—there was an awful agony flashing from those dilating eyes
—there was a dark and a terrible mystery speaking from those thin lips,
that moved, but made no sound.

For a moment that farmer tried to speak the horror that convulsed his
features.

At last, forcing the blacksmith along the brown gravelled walk, now strewn
with cinders, he pointed to the smoking embers. There, there—amid that
heap of black and smoking ruins, the blacksmith beheld a dark mass of
burnt flesh and blackened bones.

“Your wife!” shrieked the farmer, as his agony found words. “The
British they came in the night they”—and then he spoke that outrage,
which the lip quivers to think on, which the heart grows palsied to tell—
that outrage too foul to name—“Your wife,” he shrieked, pointing to that
hideous thing amid the smoking ruins; “the British they murdered your
wife, they flung her dead body in the flames—they dashed your child
against the hearthstone!”

This was the farmer's story.

And there, as the light of the breaking day fell around the spot, there
stood the husband, the father, gazing upon that mass of burned flesh and
blackened bones—all that was once his wife.

Do you ask me for the words that trembled from his white lips? Do
you ask me for the fire that blazed in his eye?

I cannot tell you. But I can tell you that there was a vow going up to
Heaven from that blacksmith's heart; that there was a clenched hand, upraised,
in the light of the breaking day!

Yes, yes, as the first gleam of the autumnal dawn broke around the spot,
as the first long gleam of sunlight streamed over the peeled skull of that
fair young wife—she was that last night—there was a vow going up to
Heaven, the vow of a maddened heart and anguished brain.

How was that vow kept? Go there to Brandywine, and where the carnage
gathers thickest, where the fight is most bloody, there you may see a

stout form striding on, lifting a huge hammer into light. Where that hammer
falls, it kills—where that hammer strikes, it crushes! It is the blacksmith's
form. And the war-cry that he shouts? It is a mad cry of vengeance—half
howl, half hurrah? Is it but a fierce yell, breaking up from
his heaving chest?

Ah no! Ah no!

It is the name of—Mary! It is the name of his young wife!

Oh, Mary—sweetest name of women—name so soft, so rippling, so musical—name
of the Mother of Jesus, made holy by poetry and religion—
how strangely did your syllables of music ring out from that blacksmith's
lips, as he went murdering on!

“Mary!” he shouts, as he drags that red-coated trooper from his steed:
“Mary!” he shrieks, as his hammer crashes down, laying that officer in
the dust. Look! Another officer, with a gallant face and form—another
officer, glittering in tinsel, clasps that blacksmith by the knees, and begs
mercy.

“I have a wife—mercy! I have a wife yonder in England—spare
me!”

The blacksmith, crazed as he is, trembles—there is a tear in his eye.

“I would spare you, but there is a form before me—the form of my
dead wife! That form has gone before me all day! She calls on me to
strike!”

And the hammer fell, and then rang out that strange war-cry—“Mary!”

At last, when the battle was over, he was found by a wagoner, who had
at least shouldered a cartwhip in his country's service—he was found sitting
by the roadside, his head sunken, his leg broken—the life blood welling
from his many wounds.

The wagoner would have carried him from the field, but the stout blacksmith
refused.

“You see, neighbor,” he said, in that voice husky with death, “I never
meddled with the British till they burned by home, till they—” he could
not speak the outrage, but his wife and child were there before his dying
eyes—“And now I've but five minutes' life in me. I'd like to give a shot
at the British afore I die. D'ye see that cherry tree? D'ye think you
could drag a man of my build up thar? Place me thar; give me a powder-horn,
three rifle balls an' a good rifle; that's all I ask.”

The wagoner granted his request; he lifted him to the foot of the cherry
tree; he placed the rifle, the balls, the powder-horn in his grasp.

Then whipping his horses through the narrow pass, from the summit of
a neighboring height, he looked down upon the last scene of the blacksmith's
life.

There lay the stout man, at the foot of the cherry tree, his head, his
broken leg hanging over the roadside bank. The blood was streaming from
his wounds—he was dying.

Suddenly he raised his head—a sound struck on his ears. A party of
British came rushing along the narrow road, mad with carnage and thirsting
for blood. They pursued a scattered band of Continentals. An officer led
the way, waving them on with his sword.

The blacksmith loaded his rifle; with that eye bright with death he took
the aim. “That's for Washington!” he shouted as he fired. The officer
lay quivering in the roadside dust. On and on came the British, nearer and
nearer to the cherry tree—the Continentals swept through the pass. Again
the blacksmith loaded—again he fired. “That's for mad Anthony Wayne!”
he shouted as another officer bit the sod.

The British now came rushing to the cherry tree, determined to cut
down the wounded man, who with his face toward them, bleeding as he
was, dealt death among their ranks. A fair-visaged officer, with golden
hair waving on the wind, led them on.

The blacksmith raised his rifle; with that hand stiffening in death, he
took the aim—he fired—the young Briton fell with a sudden shriek.

“And that,” cried the blacksmith, in a voice that strengthened into a
shout, “and that's for—”

His voice was gone! The shriek died on his white lips.

His head sunk—his rifle fell.

A single word bubbled up with his death groan. Even now, methinks I
hear that word, echoing and trembling there among the rocks of Brandywine.
That word was—Mary!

XIX.—ANTHONY WAYNE AT BRANDYWINE.

On a cold winter's day—far back in the olden time—in front of a rude
stone school-house, that arose from among an orchard, whose leafless
branches stood out against the clear blue sky, a crowd of school boys
might have been seen hurrying to and fro, in all the excitement of battle.

Their cheeks glowed crimson with the fever of the fight, as armed with
little globes of snow, they raised their battle shout, they met in conflict,
now rallying here, now retreating yonder, one party defending the entrenchments
of ice and snow, while another band came on, the forlorn hope of
the mimic fray.

It was true, the weapons that they hurled, the fort, which was at once
the object of attack and defence, were all of frozen snow, yet the conflict
was carried on with an energy and skill worthy of many a bloodier fight.

You see the fort, rising before the dark school-house wall, a mound of
ice, over a waste of snow, its summit lined with the brave defenders,
while the forlorn hope of the enemy come rushing to the conflict, resolved
to force the entrenchments and put the conquered soldiers to the sword.
Not sword of steel, but a formidable blade carved with a pen-knife from a
branch of oak or hickory.

The hearty shouts of the combatants, ring out upon the air, their cheeks
flush, their eyes fire; the contest deepens and the crisis of the fight is near.

You see that boy, not more than ten years old, standing erect upon the
fortress wall, his hazel eyes rolling like sparks of fire, in his ruddy face,
while his curly hair, white with snowy fragments, is blown around his brow,
by the winter wind?

He is the Master Spirit of the scene.

He urges his comrades with his merry shout, now bending to gather new
balls of snow, now hurling them in the face of the enemy, while his chest
heaves, expands, his nostrils quiver, his lips curl with the excitement of
the hour.

It was he that raised this fort, and leading his comrades from their books,
marshalled them in battle array.

It is he, that retreating behind the wall, lures the enemy to the attack,
and then suddenly starting into view, with flushed cheeks and sparkling
eyes, shouts the word of command, and pours confusion in their ranks.

Backed by his comrades, he springs from the fort—again that shout—one
charge more and the day is ours! Not a moment does he allow the enemy
to recover their broken ranks, but piles the snow upon their heads, and
sends the battle home. The air is thick with bombs of snow; a frosty
shower whitens their cheeks, and dangles in glittering gems from their
waving hair.

Still that hearty shout, still that brave boy in front, still his little hands
are raised, wielding the missiles of the fight, as with his chest heaving and
one foot advanced, he stands upon the frozen snow, and shouts his comrades
to the charge.

The enemy break, they scatter, they fly!

The boy with the clear eye of hazel, the curling hair of chesnut brown,
is victor of the field.

You may smile at this contest, laugh at the gloom of the gruff school-master's
visage, projecting from yonder window, and yet the day will come,
when the enraged Pedagogue will hear this boy's name rung in the lips of
the nation, as the hero of an hundred bloody battles! The day is coming,
when that little hand will yield an iron sword, while the hazel eye, flaming
from a face bathed in sweat and blood, will, with frenzied joy, survey the
mists, the glare, the hurrying ranks, the awful panorama of no mimic fight.

Time passed on, and the people of the good old county of Chester often
noted, a stripling, with his gun on his shoulder, wandering through the
woods of Brandywine, or sitting beside these still waters, holding the fishing
rod, from the brow of a projecting rock, his bare feet dipping in the waves,
as his hazel eye shone with visions of the future.

Time passed on, and there came a day, when this boy, grown to manhood,
stood on the summit of a mound that rose from the meadows of the
Brandywine.

It was in the early morning time, when the light of the stars was scarcely
paled by the glow of the autumnal dawn.

Looking from the height of the fortified knoll, defended by a deep ditch
and grim with cannon, General Wayne awaited the approach of the enemy.
Beneath him spread the valley, gleaming with American arms; yonder
rippled the stream, so soon to be purpled in its every wave, with the life-drops
of human hearts. On the opposite shore of the Brandywine, arose
wooded steeps, to wering abruptly from the bed of the rivulet, crowned from
the ripple to the sky with forest trees.

Wayne stood on the summit of the knoll, his face flushed with deep
anxiety. He was about to fight, not like La Fayette, for a strange people
of a far land, not like Pulaski, as an Exile and a Wanderer, nor yet like
Washington, the leader of a People. No! Surrounded by the memories
of childhood, his foot upon his native soil, his chest swelling with the air
that came rich and fragrant over the orchards of his native valley, he had
buckled on the sword to fight for that soil, he stood prepared to spend his
blood in defence of that valley.

By his side stood his gallant roan, caparisoned for the battle.

Tradition tells us, that it was a noble steed, with small head, broad chest
and tapering limbs. When he rushed into the fight, it was with neck arched,
eye rolling in fire, and dark mane quivering on the battle breeze. But when
his master's shout rung on the air, sounding the charge which mowed the
foemen down like stubble before the flame, then the gallant roan uttered his
battle neigh and went through the smoke and into the fire like a bomb shell,
hurled from the mortar along the darkened sky.

Wayne stood with his hand resting on his sword hilt. In stature, not
more than an inch above the middle heigth, in form displaying a hardy
energy, an iron vigor in every outline, was clad in a blue coat faced with
buff, and falling open on his broad chest. There was a belt of dark leather
over his breast, military boots on his limbs, a plain chapeau, surmounted by
a plume of mingled red and white, surmounted his brow.

Beneath that plume you might behold the broad forehead, the aquiline
nose, the clear, deep hazel eyes. It was the face of a warrior, nurtured
from boyhood to love the blaze of cannon, and hail the clang of contending
swords, as the bridegroom hails the marriage music.

Surrounded by his brave men, Wayne looked upon the opposite steeps,
and looked for the bayonets of the foe.

At last they came. By the first gleam of morning light, he saw the
Hessian soldiers, burly in form, loaded with ornaments and armed to the
teeth, emerge from the shadows of the trees. Their heavy accoutrements,
their lofty caps, bushy with fur, their well-filled knapsacks, were all clearly
perceptible in the morning light. And the same sun that shone over their
bayonets, revealed not only the British banner, waving slowly in the morning

air, but the flags of Hesse and Anspach fluttering above their hordes of
slaves.

Wayne beheld them come, and spoke to the cannoniers, arrayed in their
faded uniform of blue and buff.

In a moment, those cannon at his feet uttered a volume of smoke, that
rolled in folds of gloomy grandeur, high upward into the azure heavens.

He spoke to the Riflemen, in their rude hunting shirts of blue, with the
powder horn and knife at their sides.

He saw them rush from the embankment, he beheld them overspread the
meadow. Here, the steel cap of Porterfield, with its bucktail plume, there,
the short sword of Maxwell, gleaming over the heads of his men. Bending
from the fortified knoll, Wayne watched their career, with an interest
that fired his eye with deeper light.

Over the meadow, into the trees,—a solitary rifle shot yelled on the air,
a solitary death-groan shrieked into the clear heavens.

The battle had begun.

Then crash on crash, peal on peal, the bands of Maxwell and Porterfield
poured their balls into the faces of the Hessian foe.

Wayne beheld them glide among the trees, he saw the enemy recoil in
the midst of the waters, he heard their cries, but did not hear the shouts of
his Riflemen. For these Riflemen, in the hour of battle, scarcely ever
spoke a word with their lips. When they had a message to send, it spoke
out from the tubes of their rifles. And these rifles always spoke to the heart!

For the first time, that blue sky was clouded by the smoke of conflict.
For the first time, the groans of Christians hewn down by Christians, yelled
on the air. For the first time, the Brandywine was stained with blood of
the white man; for the first time, dead men, borne onward by its waves,
with their faces to the light, looked up with glassy eyes and glided on!

Wayne beheld it all!

While the Hessian cannon answered to his own, while the fire from this
knoll was answered by the blaze yonder, Wayne bent forward, laid his
hand on the neck of his steed and watched the current of the fight.

He was about to spring on his steed and rush into the conflict, when he
saw his Riflemen come out from the woods again, their arms dimmed, their
faces dabbled with blood. They had driven the Hessians back step by step,
foot by foot they had hurled them back upon the opposite shore, and now
while the water dripped from their attire, silently lined the banks, awaiting
the next onset of the foe.

The morning passed away, and the enemy did not resume their attack.
Their arms gleamed far over the hills, their banners waved on every side,
between the leaves of the forest oaks, and yet they dared not cross the
Brandywine again. Five thousand strong, they held their position in silence,
planted their cannon, arrayed their columns, and silently prepared the
destruction of the Rebel Foe.

The morning passed. Shaken by a thousand conflicting emotions,
Washington hurried along the eastern heights of Brandywine, his grey
horse, now seen among the trees of Brenton's Ford, now darting through
the battle-smoke of Chadd's Ford, now halting beside the gallant roan of
Anthony Wayne. He knew not, whether the attack of Kniphausen was a
mere feint; at one moment he anticipated the approach of the British in
full force, eighteen thousand strong, across the Brandywine, at another,
turning his eye away from the waters of the stream, he awaited the gleam
of Cornwallis' arms, from the northern woods.

Wayne and Washington stood on the summit of the fortified knoll, talking
long and earnestly together. The same expression of suspense and
anxiety animated the lineaments of each warrior face.

The morning passed away.

Meanwhile, pausing on their arms, the Americans awaited the renewal
of the attack, but they waited for hours in vain. It was not made when
eleven o'clock came, and the sun was rising towards his noonday height;
and Sullivan looked anxiously and eagerly from the heights were he was
stationed, for the appearance of the enemy at Brinton's Ford, but they came
not; nor could his scouts give him any intelligence of the movements of
Howe or Cornwallis.

General Kniphausen, he well knew, had made the attempt to cross at
Chadd's Ford, and had been nobly and gallantly repulsed; but the larger
divisions of the enemy—where were they? What was their plan of operations?
Where would Howe appear, or in what quarter would Cornwallis
commence the attack?

All was wrapt in mystery to the minds of Washington, Wayne and the
leader of his right wing. This silence of Howe and Cornwallis they feared
had something of omen—dark and fearful omen—of defeat and dismay, for
its explanation.

Eleven o'clock came, and Washington, with Sullivan by his side, stood
gazing from an elevated knoll, about half-way between Brinton's and Chadd's
Ford.

A horseman was observed riding up the hill-side at the top of his horse's
speed. His attire seemed to be that of a substantial yeoman, his coat hung
on his arm, his hat was extended in his upraised hand; his dress was disordered,
his face covered with dust, and, as he rode up the hill-side, he sank
the spurs in the flanks of his horse, whose eye glared wildly, while the
dust and foam on his limbs showed that he had borne his master long and
far.

In a moment the horseman flung himself from his horse, and rushed to
the side of Washington. In hurried words he told his story, his manner
was warm, urgent even to agony. He was a farmer—his name was Chaytor—he
lived some miles northward of Kennet's Square—early on that

morning he had been aroused by the tread of armed men and the tramp of
war steeds.

He looked from his window, and beheld the British army passing northward—General
Howe and Lord Cornwallis were with them.

He believed it to be the intention of the enemy to make the passage of
the Brandywine at Trimble's Ford and Jeffrey's Ford, some miles above
the forks of the river—to occupy the high hills to the northward of Birmingham
meeting-house, and thus having the entire right wing of the Continental
forces laid open to his attack, Howe thought he might accomplish
an easy victory.

This was the story of the farmer, and Washington would have given it
credence, were it not for one fearful doubt that darkened over his mind.
The surrounding country swarmed with tories—might not this be a tory
spy in disguise? He discredited the story of the farmer, though he enforced
its truth by an appeal to an oath, and even continued to utter it, with
tears in his eyes, yet still under the influence of this fearful suspicion,
Washington refused his credence to the story of Farmer Chaytor. This
mistake lost the battle of the Brandywine.

Soon after this incident, Sullivan received information by the hands of
Lieutenant Colonel Ross, that the enemy had just passed the forks of the
Brandywine, some two or three miles above the Fork, five thousand strong,
and provided with sixteen or eighteen field pieces.

No sooner was this information transmitted to Washington, than he
ordered Sullivan to advance towards the Forks, and attack this division of
the enemy. But as Sullivan is about to undertake this movement, fresh
scouts come in, and report no intelligence of the British army whatever in
the quarter named. The movement was postponed; and while Sullivan
was thus shifting from one opinion to another, while Washington, with
Wayne, was expecting the attack at Chadd's Ford, through this unfortunate
contradiction of conflicting intelligence, the enemy was allowed to take a
secure and powerful position, some three miles north-east of Brinton's
Ford, and some four miles from Chadd's Ford.

We have seen the battle which ensued, and gone through its varies phases
of ferocity and chivalry.

While Washington with his Generals, Sullivan, Greene, and La-Fayette
was doing immortal deeds in the valley of the Quaker Temple, alone on the
heights of Chadd's Ford, stood Anthony Wayne, breasting the overwhelming
force of the Hessian army, with his little band of heroes.

With a thousand half-armed Continentals, he opposed five thousand hirelings,
prepared in every respect for the game of war, their cannon glooming
in every steep, their bayonets gleaming on every hill.

It was at four o'clock, that the valley of the Brandywine near Chadd's
Ford, presented a spectacle worthy of the brightest days of chivalry.

At first looking from the steep where Wayne watched the fight, his hand
laid on the neck of his steed, you behold nothing but vast clouds of smoke
rolling like the folds of an immense curtain over the valley. Through
these clouds, streamed every instant great masses of flame. Then long and
arrowy flashes of light, quivered through their folds. Now they wore the
blackness of midnight, in a moment they were changed into masses of
snow.

And as they swayed to and fro, you might behold a strange meeting
which took place in the lap of the valley. Pouring from the woods above
the stream, the Hessian hordes in their varied and picturesque costume,
came swarming over the field. As they advanced, the cannon above their
heads on the western hills, belched volumes of fire and death, and lighted
them on their way. As they came on, their musquets poured volley after
volley, into the faces of the foe. Their wild battle-shout was heard, in the
din of conflict. Altogether the war of cannon, the sharp clang of musquetry,
the clouds now rolling here, now floating yonder, the bayonets gleaming
like scattered points of flame, far along the field, presented a scene at once
wild and beautiful.

And there in the centre of the valley, under the very eye of Wayne, a
band of men, some clad in plain farmer's attire, some in the hunting shirt
of the backwoodsman, stood undismayed while the Hessians swarmed on
every side. No shout broke from their sturdy ranks. Silently loading
their rifles, they stood as though rooted to the sod, every one selecting a
broad chest for his target, as he raised his piece to the shoulder.

The sod beneath was slippery with blood. The faces of dead men
glared horribly all around. The convulsed forms of wounded soldiers—
whose arms had been torn off at the shoulder, whose eyes had been darkened
forever, whose skulls had been crushed from the crown to the brow—
were beneath their feet.

And yet they fought on. They did not shout, but waiting patiently until
they might almost touch the bayonets of the Hessians, they poured the
blaze of rifles in their faces. And every time that blaze lighted up the
cloud, a new heap of dead men littered the field.

Still the Hessians advanced. Sold by their King to Murder, at so much
per day, very brutes in human shape whose business it was to Kill, they
trampled the dead bodies of their own comrades into the sod, uttered their
yell and plunged into the ranks of the Continental soldiers.

In vain the gleam of their bayonets which shone so beautiful, in vain their
hoarse shout, which echoed afar like the howl of savage beasts, mangling
their prey, in vain their elegantly arranged columns, displayed in the most
approved style of European warfare!

The American riflemen met them breast to breast, and sent their bullets
home. Their faces darkened by powder, spotted with blood, their uncouth
attire fluttering in rags, they did not move one inch, but in stern silence only

broken by the report of their rifles, these Continental heroes met the onset
of the foe.

Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds, and lighted up the theatre of
battle.

Almost at the same moment a venerable mansion rising among the woods
on yonder shore of the Brandywine, ascended to the sky, in a whirling
cloud of smoke and flame. Blown up by the explosion of powder, it shot
a long column of fire and blackness into the sky, and then its fragments
strewed the battle-field, mingled with the mangled wrecks of human forms.

Anthony Wayne, resting his hand on the neck of his steed, beheld it all.

He quivered in every nerve with the excitement of the combat, and yet
pressing his lip between his teeth, awaited the moment when his sword
should flash from the scabbard, his roan war-horse dash like a thunderbolt
into the storm of battle.

That moment came at last. It was when the bloody contest had rolled
over the valley for an hour and more, that the crisis came.

Look yonder along the summit of the western hills, where the Hessian
banner darkens through the trees! Look yonder and behold that gallant
company of warriors wind slowly down the hill, their swords, their helmets,
their plumes, brightening in the glow of the setting sun. Four hundred
strong, all attired in midnight black, relieved by gold, each helmet bearing
the ominous skull and cross bones emblazoned on its front, the dragoons of
Anspach came to battle.

At their head mounted on a snow-white steed, whose uplifted head and
quivering nostrils denote the fever of the strife, rides a man of warrior presence,
his steel helmet shadowed beneath a mass of dark plumes, his broad
chest clad in a rich uniform, black as the raven's wing, glittering with stars
and epaulettes of gold. It is Kniphausen, the General of the Hessian horde,
riding at the head of veteran troopers, the bravest assassins of his hireling
band.

In their rude faces, darkened by the heavy mustachio and beard, cut and
hacked by scars, you read no gleam of pity. The cry of “Quarter!” falls
unheeded on the ears of men like these. No matter how just or infamous
the cause, their business is war, their pastime butchery. Unfurling the
black flag of their Prince—you see the Skull and Cross bones glittering in
the sun—they descend the hill, dash through the stream, and pour the
avalanche of their charge upon the Continental host.

Wayne saw them come, and glanced for a moment on their formidable
array. Then turning he beheld the steeds of some two hundred troopers,
scattered through the orchard at his back, the swords of their riders touching
the ripe fruit which hung from the bending boughs.

Wayne silently removed his plumed chapeau, and took from the hands
of a soldier at his side, his trooper's helmet, faced with steel and adorned
with a single bucktail plume.

Then vaulting in the saddle, he unsheathed his sword, and turning to the
troopers shouted in his deep, indignant tones, the simple battle-word—
“Come on!”

He plunged from the embankment, and ere his gallant roan had reached
the base of the knoll, forth from the orchard trees burst that band of tried
soldiers, and with their swords steadily gleaming, thundered in one solid
mass down into the whirlpool of the fight.

Their banner, a White Horse painted on a blue field, and surrounded
with Thirteen Stars, fluttered out upon the breeze; that single peal of the
trumpet sounding the charge, shrieked far along the meadow.

Right through the battle Kniphausen crashes on, the swords of his men
describing fiery circles in the air, the riflemen fall back, cut by their steel,
crushed by their horses hoofs, panic stricken by their Hessian hurrah.

But courage, brave yeomen! Wayne is coming; his banner is on the
breeze, his sword rises above his head, a glittering point of flame amid that
sea of rolling clouds.

The soldiers who remained on the embarkment, beheld a strange and
stirring sight.

Anthony Wayne, at the head of two hundred brave troopers, dashing
toward the centre of the meadow, from the east—the Hessian Kniphausen,
at the same moment advancing to the same point from the west. Between
the Generals lay heaps of dead and dying; around them, the riflemen and
Yagers, these in the hunting shirt, the others in a gaudy dress of green,
waged a desperate and bloody contest.

Wayne turned his head over his shoulder, and waved his sword—“Come
on!” the deep words rung through his clenched teeth.

They knew his voice, knew the glare of his battle eye, knew that uplifted
arm, and dented sword!

Never has Kniphausen, crashing on, in the full current of impetuous
slaughter, beheld the trooper at his side, fall dead on the neck of his steed,
the marks of the rifle-ball oozing from his brow, he also looked up and beheld
the coming of Mad Anthony Wayne!

It cannot be said that Wayne fought after the most approved style of
European tactics.

But there was an honest sincerity about his manner of fighting, an unpretending
zeal in the method of his charge, when riding the enemy down,
he wrote his name upon their faces with his sword, that taught them to
respect the hardy son of Chester.

“Upon them!” he shouted, and at once his two hundred troopers went
into the heart of the Hessian column. They did not move very slowly
you will observe, nor advance in scattered order, but four abreast, a solid
bolt of horses, men and steel, they burst upon the foe, just as you have
seen a rock hurled from an enormous height, crush the trees in the valley
beneath.

The banner of the White Horse and Stars, mingled with the Black Flag
of Anspach—a cloud of men, horses and swords, whirled like the last effort
of a thunderstorm along the valley. In a moment, you can see nothing,
but the points of swords, gleaming from the confusion of the conflict.
Then, troopers bending over the mane of their steeds, their good swords
quivering together, ere the fatal blow—horses themselves, fired with the
fury of the hour, tearing each other's necks with their teeth—wounded
men, plunging from their saddles to the sod—the banners of the foemen
waving over all!

It was in the centre of that whirling fight, that Kniphausen and Wayne,
cutting their way with their swords, silently confronted each other. The
dark figure on the white steed drew near and nearer to the form, attired in
blue and buff, and mounted on a roan war-horse. Each man beheld his
foe, and their eyes met in a look, as searching as it was momentary.

The appearance of Wayne indicated violent emotion. His lip compressed
between his teeth, his hazel eye firing beneath the frontlet of his cap, he
grasped his sword, and for one moment looked around.

It was a hideous spectacle that met his eye. The Continentals scattering
over the meadow, in broken array; the ground heaped with the bodies
of the dead; the Brandywine, ghastly with the forces of the slain, thrown
into light by its crimson waves.

That look seemed to make the blood within him, boil like molten lead.
For raising himself in his stirrips, he called to his brother knights—to Marshall
of Virginia, to Proctor of the Land of Penn, to the heroic riflemen,
Maxwell and Porterfield—he shouted, the day was not yet lost, and then,
with one impulse, himself and his horse, charged Kniphausen home.

No human arm might stand the fury of that charge. In a moment
Kniphausen found himself alone in the midst of his enemies, the sword of
Wayne, glaring near and nearer to his heart, the faces of the Continentals
darkening round.

He appealed to his men, but in vain. To drive them back on the rivulet,
to hurl them, horses and men together, into the red embrace of the waves,
to cut the banner staff, and trail their banner in the mire, to sabre them by
tens and twenties, as they strove to recover their battle order—this was a
brilliant thing to do, but right brilliantly it was done, by Mad Anthony and
his men.

That sight thrilled like electric fire along the field. In a moment the
Continentals rallied; the riflemen advanced; the artillery began to play,
the air thundered once more with the battle shout!

Reining his roan war-horse on the banks of the Brandywine, his sword
in sober truth dripping with blood, Anthony Wayne, his face quivering with
the intoxication of the battle, shouted to his soldiers, cheered them to the
charge, saw them whirl the whole Hessian force into the stream.

How brilliantly the fire of hope and glory, lit up the hazel eye of
Wayne!

At the instant, while the Hessian army in all its varied costume thronged
the bed of the rivulet and scattered in dismay along the western shore, while
Kniphausen mad with chagrin, hurried from rank to rank, cursing the men
who would not fight, while Marshall and Proctor, Maxwell and Porterfield
were hurrying their forces to the charge, the sun shone out from the western
sky and lighted up the Brandywine, the valley, the forces of the living
and the crushed countenances of the dead.

The sudden gush of sunlight bathed the brow of Anthony Wayne, as
thrilling to his inmost heart, he waved his sword, and once more sounded
the charge.

At the very moment, in the very flush of his triumph, a strange sound
from the east growled on the ears of the General. It was the tramp of
the right wing under Washington, Sullivan and Greene, retreating from the
field of the Quaker Temple. Wayne saw their broken array, and knew
that the field, not the day was lost.

His sword sank slowly to his side, with his face to the foe, he pointed
the way to old Chester; he uttered the deep words of command.

“The soldiers of the right wing have been forced to retreat before superior
numbers—we will protect their retreat!”

With surprise, indeed with awe, Kniphausen beheld the victorious band,
who had just hurled his forces back upon the stream, slowly form in the
order of retreat, their swords and banners gleaming in the sun.

And as the Continental forces slowly wound along the eastern hills—as
Kniphausen proceeded to occupy the ground which they had deserted—a
solitary warrior, the last of the rebel army, reined his steed on the knoll of
Chadd's Ford, and with his blood-stained face glowing in the sunshine
looked back upon the field, and in one glance surveyed its soil, transformed
into bloody mire, its river floating with dead, its overlooking hills glittering
with Hessian steel!

That one look, accompanied by a quivering of the lip, a heaving of his
broad chest, the last gaze over, and the roan war-horse turned away, bearing
from the field of Brandywine its own hero, Mad Anthony Wayne!

From the rising to the setting of the sun, he had maintained the fight;
on the hills of his childhood, he had worked out his boyhood's dream, and
wrote his name on the column of ages, with his battle sword.[2]

XX.—FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE.

It was a calm and lovely day in summer—the time was morning, and
the place the valley of the Birmingham meeting house. The place was
calm and lovely as on the battle morn, but forty-seven long years had past
since that day of terror, and yet the bye roads the hills and the plains, were
all alive with people clad in their holiday costume. A long procession
wound with banners and with the gleam of arms, around the base of Osborne's
Hill, while in their front the object of every eye, there rolled a
close carriage, drawn by six magnificent steeds, and environed by civic soldiers
who rent the air with shouts, and flung wreaths of flowers and laurel
beneath the horses' hoofs.

Slowly and with peals of solemn music—the summer sun above, shining
serenely from a cloudless sky—the carriage wound along the ascent of the
Hill and in a few moments, while valley and plain below were black with
people, the elegantly caparisoned steeds were reined in on the broad summit
of that battle-mount.

There was a pause for a moment, and then an aged man, a veteran tremulous
with the burden of seventy years, and grim with scars—clad in the
costume of the Revolution, approached and opened the carriage door.

The crowd formed a silent circle around the scene.

A man of some sixty years, tall in stature, magnificent in his bearing,
stepped from the carriage, his form clad in a plain dress of blue, his uncovered
brow glowing in the sun, with the grey hairs streaming to the
breeze.

He stepped on the sod with the bearing of a man formed to win the hearts
of men; he advanced with the manner of one of nature's Kings. For a
moment he stood uncovered on the brow of the hill, with the sun shining
on his noble brow, while his clear blue eye lighted up, as with the memories
of forty-seven years.

And then from plain, from hill, from valley, from the lips of ten thousand
freemen arose one shout—the thunder of a Peoples' gratitude—loud, prolonged
and deafening. The soldiers waved their swords on high—they
raised their caps in the air—and again, and again, the shout went up to the
clear heavens.—In that chorus of joy, only a word was intelligible, a word
that bubbled from the overflowing fountains of ten thousand hearts:

“La Fayette!”

The Stranger was observed to tremble with a strange emotion. He who
had fought undaunted in the battle of that valley forty-seven years ago,
trembled like a child. The Hero of Two Revolutions, the Boy of Brandywine,
the Prisoner of Olmutz, who flung his broad lands and princely revenues
in the lap of freedom, now bowed his head, leaned upon the shoulder
of the veteran and veiled his eyes from the light.

When he raised his face again, there were tears in his eyes.

So beautiful that country bloomed before him, so darkly on his memory
rushed the condition of blighted France! The land of his birth trodden
under the hoofs of the invader, the Bourbon-Idiot on her Throne, the Napoleon
of her love, dead in his island-gaol of St. Helena. And here an
Exile—almost a homeless Wanderer—stood the Man of Two Revolutions,
gazing upon the battle plain, which forty-seven years before had been
crowded by British legions, but now bloomed only with the blessings of
peace, the smile of an all-paternal God!

The contrast between the Land of Washington and the Land of Napoleon,
was too much for La Fayette.

He gazed upon the hills crowned with woodlands, the farms blooming
with cultivation and dotted with Homes upon the level plains, green as with
the freshness of spring, the wide landscape glowing in the sun, the very
Garden of the Lord—he gazed—he thought of—France. The tears
streamed freely down his cheeks.

Then his blue eye surveyed the Quaker temple, rising on its far-off hill,
surrounded by its grassy mounds. As on the battle-day it looked so with
its grey walls and rude roof and narrow windows it now arose, the trees
around it, quivering their tops in the morning light.

Again the shout of that dense crowd thundered on the air, Welcome, welcome
the friend of Washington, La Fayette!

But it fell unheeded on his ear. His soul was with the Past. There
forty-seven years before, he had seen Washington in all his chivalric manhood;
there Pulaski in his white array and battle-worn face, thundering on,
in his hurricane charge; there Sullivan and Wayne and Greene, with all
the heroes doing deeds that started into history ere the day was gone; he
had seen, known them all, and loved the Chief of all.

And now—

He stretched forth his arms, and clasped the veteran of the Revolution to
his heart.

“They're all gone, now—” were the earnest words that bubbled from
his full heart: “All comrade, but you! Of all the chivalry of Brandywine
that forty-seven years ago, blazed along these hills, what now remains?”

Then as the vision of his blighted France, rushed once again upon his
soul, he murmured incoherently, “My God! My God! Happy country
—happy People!”

There on the summit of the Battle-Hill he leaned his arm upon his

brother veteran, not trusting his tongue with further speech. His heart
was too full for words. As he stood overwhelmed by his emotions, the
shout of the people was heard once more—

“Welcome the Champion of Freedom in two Worlds, the hero of Brandywine
and friend of Washington, welcome La Fayette!”