第69章 Chapter (2)

For such heroic daring in defence of their country, in place of receiving applause from lord Rawdon, Gales, as we have seen, received his bloody death.

His gallant young friend, Dinkins, was very near drawing his rations of a like doleful dish, for lord Rawdon had him mounted upon the same cart with the halter round his neck, ready for a launch into eternity, when the tories suggested to his lordship their serious apprehensions that a terrible vengeance might follow: this saved his life.

Everybody has heard the mournful story of colonel Lee's little bugler, and how he was murdered by colonel Tarleton. This "poor beardless boy", as Lee, in his pathetic account of that horrid transaction, calls him, had been mounted on a very fleet horse; but to gratify a countryman who had brought some news of the British, and was afraid of falling into their hands, Lee ordered the boy to exchange his horse, a moment, for that of the countryman, which happened to be a miserable brute.

This Lee did in his simplicity, not even dreaming that any thing in the shape of civilized man could think of harming such a child.

Scarcely had Lee left him, when he was overtaken by Tarleton's troopers, who dashed up to him with looks of death, brandishing their swords over his head. In vain his tender cheeks, reminding them of their own youthful brothers, sought to touch their pity; in vain, with feeble voice, and as long as he was able, he continued to cry for quarter.

They struck their cruel swords into his face and arms, which they gashed with so many mortal wounds that he died the next day.

"Is your name Wiley?" said one of Tarleton's captains, whose name was TUCK, to Mr. John Wiley, sheriff of Camden, who had lately whipped and cropped a noted horse thief, named Smart. "Is your name Wiley?" said captain Tuck to the young man, at whose door he rode up and asked the question. --"Yes, sir," replied Mr. Wiley. "Well, then, sir, you are a d--n-d rascal,"rejoined captain Tuck, giving him at the same time a cruel blow over the forehead with his broadsword. Young Wiley, though doomed to die, being not yet slain, raised his naked arm to screen the blow.

This, though no more than a common instinct in poor human nature in the moment of terror, served but to redouble the fury of captain Tuck, who continued his blows at the bleeding, staggering youth, until death kindly placed him beyond the reach of human malice.

All this was done within a few hundred paces of lord Cornwallis, who never punished captain Tuck.

But poor Peter Yarnall's case seems still more deplorable.

This hard fated man, a simple, inoffensive quaker, lived near Camden.

Having urgent business with a man, who, as he understood, was with general Sumter, on the opposite side of the Catawba, he went over to him. The man happened, at that moment, to be keeping guard over some tory prisoners. A paper which Yarnall wanted to see was, it seems, in a jacket pocket in the man's tent hard by. "Hold my piece a moment, sir,"said he to Yarnall, "and I'll bring the paper." Yarnall, though averse, as a quaker, from all killing of enemies with a gun, yet saw no objection to holding one a moment. The next day, a day for ever black in the American calendar, witnessed the surprisal of general Sumter and the release of the tory prisoners, one of whom immediately went his way and told colonel Tarleton that he had seen Peter Yarnall, the day before, keeping guard over the king's friends, prisoners to the rebels.

The poor man's house was quickly surrounded by the British cavalry.

Vain were all his own explanations, his wife's entreaties, or his children's cries. He was dragged to Camden, and thrust into prison.

Every morning, his wife and daughter, a girl of about fifteen, rode into town in an old chair, to see him and to bring him milk and fruits, which must have been highly acceptable to one crammed, in the dogdays, into a small prison, with one hundred and sixty-three half-stifled wretches.

On the fourth day, an amiable young lady, Miss Charlton, living near the prison, had heard of poor Yarnall's fate that morning.

Soon therefore as she saw Mrs. Yarnall and her daughter coming along as usual, with their little present to their husband and father, she burst into tears.

Mrs. Yarnall alighted at the door of the jail, and begged to see her husband.

"Follow me," said one of the guard, "and I'll show you your husband."As she turned the corner, "There he is, madam," said the soldier, pointing to her husband as he hung dead on a beam from the window.

The daughter sunk to the ground; but her mother, as if petrified at the sight, stood silent and motionless, gazing on her dead husband with that wild keen eye of unutterable woe, which pierces all hearts.

Presently, as if braced up with despair, she seemed quite recovered, and calmly begged one of the soldiers to assist her to take down the corpse and lay it in the bottom of the chair. Then taking her seat, with her daughter sobbing by her side, and her husband dead at her feet, she drove home apparently quite unmoved; and during the whole time she was preparing his coffin and performing the funeral duties, she preserved the same firm unaltered looks. But soon as the grave had shut its mouth on her husband, and divorced him for ever from her sight, the remembrance of the past rushed upon her thoughts with a weight too heavy for her feeble nature to bear. Then clasping her hands in agony, she shrieked out, "Poor me! poor me! I have no husband, no friend now!"and immediately ran raving mad, and died in that state.

There was young M'Coy: the eye of humanity must weep often, as she turns the page that tells how this amiable youth was murdered.

His father was one of the most active of our militia captains.

As none better understood American rights, so none more deeply resented British aggressions, than did captain M'Coy.