第71章 Chapter (4)

These keen self-condemning reflections harrowed every root of quiet from his soul. If he went to his couch, it was only to groan, sleepless and tossing, all the restless night. If he got up, it was but to sit, or walk to and fro in his family, with dark and woeful looks, like one whom trouble had overcome.

In the midst of these anguishing reflections, which appeared to be wearing him fast to the grave, a respite was afforded, and by a hand from which it was least expected. Lord Cornwallis, having by his first proclamation, obtained to the instrument of neutrality aforesaid, the signatures of many thousands of the citizens of South Carolina, then came out with a SECOND proclamation, in which he nominates the paper above not an instrument of neutrality, but a bond of allegiance to the king, and calls upon all who had signed it, to take up arms against the rebels! -- threatening to treat as deserters those who refused!

This fraud of my lord Cornwallis, excited in all honest men the deepest indignation. It completely revived colonel Haynes.

To his unspeakable joy, he now saw opened a door of honorable return to duty and happiness. And since, contrary to the most solemn compact, he was compelled to fight, he very naturally determined to fight the British, rather than his own countrymen. He fled to his countrymen, who received him with joy, and gave him a command of horse.

He was surprised and carried to Charleston, where lord Rawdon, then commandant, ordered him, in his favorite phrase, to be `knocked into irons'. A mock trial, dignified with the name of `court martial', was held over him, and colonel Haynes was sentenced to be hung. Everybody in Charleston, Britons as well as Americans, all heard this sentence with horror, except colonel Haynes himself. On his cheek alone, all agree, it produced no change. It appeared that the deed which he had done, signing that accursed paper, had run him desperate. Though the larger part, even of his enemies, believing that it was done merely from sympathy with his wife and children, felt the generous disposition to forgive him, yet he could never forgive himself. It had inflicted on his mind a wound too ghastly to be healed.

To their own, and to the great honor of human nature, numbers of the British and loyalists, with governor Bull at their head, preferred a petition to lord Rawdon in his behalf. But the petition was not noticed. The ladies then came forward in his favor with a petition, couched in the most delicate and moving terms, and signed by all the principal females of Charleston, tories as well as whigs.

But all to no purpose. It was then suggested by the friends of humanity, that if the colonel's little children, for they had no mother, she, poor woman! crushed under the double weight of grief and the small-pox, was just sunk at rest in the grave. It was suggested, I say, that if the colonel's little children, dressed in mourning, were to fall at the knees of lord Rawdon, he would pity their motherless condition, and give to their prayers their only surviving parent.

They were accordingly dressed in black, and introduced into his presence: they fell down at his knees, and, with clasped hands and tear-streaming eyes, lisped their father's name, and begged his life: but in vain.