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Silence, and a deep anxiety, hung, like a spell, above
the ambuscading party. The woods lay at rest, and
the waters of the fountain trickled quietly, as if Peace
lay sleeping in their neighbourhood, and Security
watched over her. So well had Singleton made his
arrangements, and so cautiously had his plans been
executed, that no necessity existed for bustle or confusion.
Each trooper had his duty as carefully assigned
him as the boy Frampton; and all of them,
taking a likeness from their gallant leader, lay at quiet
in the close shadow of the thicket, silent as the grave,
and only awaiting the signal which was to fill its unfolding
jaws.

They waited not long before the advance of the
tories appeared in sight; then came the prisoners—a
melancholy troop—men, women, and children;—and
then the main body of the marauders, under Gaskens,
bringing up the rear. In all, there were probably a
hundred persons; an oddly assorted, and most miscellaneous
collection, with nothing uniform in their equipment.
They were not British, but tories; though here
and there the gaudy red coat, probably a tribute of the
battle-field, was ostentatiously worn by an individual,
upon whom, no doubt, it conferred its own character,
and some of that authority which certainly would have
been possessed by its owner were he a Briton. The

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present troop of banditti—for, as yet, they could be
styled by no other more proper epithet—was one of
the many by which the country was overrun in every
direction. Banding together in small squads, the dissolute
and the wicked among the citizens, native and
adopted, thus availed themselves of the distractions
of the war to revenge themselves upon old enemies, destroy
the property they could not appropriate, and, with
the sword and the rope, punish the more honest, or the
more quiet, for that pacific forbearance which they themselves
were so little disposed to manifest. In every
section of the province these risings were continually
going on. In one night, ten, twenty, thirty, or more,
would collect together, and by a sudden and impetuous
movement, anticipating all preparation, would rush
with fire and sword upon their whig neighbours, whose
first knowledge of the incursion would be the brand
in the blazing barn, or the bullet driven through the
crashing pane. They shot down, in this manner, even
as he sat with his little circle at the family fireside,
the stout yeoman who might have defended or avenged
them. The arm of the law was staid by invasion,
and the sanction of the invaders was necessarily given,
under all circumstances, to the party which claimed
to fight in their behalf. The tory became the British
ally, and the whig his victim accordingly; and to such
a degree were the atrocities of these wretches carried,
that men were dragged from the arms of their
wives at midnight, and suffered for their love of country
in the sight of wife and children, by dying in the
rope, and from their own roof-trees. Of this character
was the body of tories, under Amos Gaskens,
now rapidly approaching the place of ambush. They
had formed themselves on the Williamsburgh line,
chiefly the desperadoes and outcasts from that quarter,
and had chosen among themselves an appropriate leader
in Gaskens, of whom we are told by the historian, that
even before the war he had been notorious for his petty
larcenies. From this quarter they had passed into St.
Johns, Berkley, marking their progress, throughout,

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with all manner of havoc, and stopping at no atrocity.
Such employment was not less grateful to themselves
than to their new masters, to whom they thought it
likely, and indeed knew, that it must commend them.
Gaskens aimed more highly, indeed, than his neighbours.
He had already been honoured with a British
captaincy—he desired a still loftier commission; and
the recklessness of his deeds was intended still farther
to approve him in the sight of those from whom he
hoped to receive it. If the atrocities of Tarleton resulted
in his promotion and honour, why not like atrocities
in Amos Gaskens? Reason might well ask, why
not? since, in cruelty, they were fair parallels for one
another.

The prisoners brought with Gaskens were chiefly
taken from the parish of St. Johns, Berkley. One
family, consisting of a man named Griffin, his wife,
and daughter, a tall, good-looking girl, about seventeen,
were closely watched, apart from the rest of the captives,
by a guard especially assigned for that purpose.
The taking of this man had cost the tory two of his
best soldiers, and he had himself been wounded in the
arm by a stroke from Griffin's sabre. Griffin had
fought desperately against his captors; and an old
grudge between himself and Gaskens had stimulated
them both, the one to desire his taking, the other to
resist, even unto death, the effort of his enemy. The
result, so far, has been shown. Griffin tried to escape
at the approach of the tory, but the back track to the
neighbouring swamp had been intercepted by Gaskens,
who knew the route, and three of his men who went
there in advance to watch it; while the main body of
the troop pressed forward to the cottage. It was there
that the flying man encountered them, and the fight was
desperately waged before they conquered him. This
did not happen until two of his dastardly assailants had
fallen beneath his good sword and vigorous arm. He
pressed Gaskens himself backward, and would have
escaped, but for the aid of other tories coming on him
from behind. Though not seriously wounded in the

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fray, he had been much chopped and mangled. A large
seam appeared upon his thigh, and there were two slight
gashes over his cheek, not so deep as ugly. Conquered
at last, his hands were bound, and, with his
family, he was made to attend his captors on foot.
The manful resistance which he had offered to his
enemy, instead of securing him respect, exposed him
only to the most torturing irritations in his progress
with them. Before his eyes, they hurled the brand
into his little cottage, and he saw the fierce flames in
full mastery over his only home, long before they had
left the enclosure. In spite of his wounds and injuries,
the sturdy fellow maintained a stout heart, and
showed no sign of despondency; but bearing himself
as boldly as if he were not the victim but the victor,
he defied the base spirit of his conqueror, and with an
eye that spoke all the feeling of the fiercest hatred,
he looked the defiance which, at that time, he had no
better mode of manifesting. Nor was the feeling of
Gaskens towards his prisoner a jot less malignantly
hostile than that of Griffin. There was an old story
between them—such a story as is common to the
strifes of a wild and but partially settled neighbourhood.
They had been neighbours—that is to say,
they dwelt on contiguous plantations—but never friends.
For many years they lived in the same district, seeing
each other frequently, but without intercourse.
This was entirely owing to Griffin, who disliked Gaskens,
and studiously withheld himself from all intimacy
with him. Griffin was an industrious farmer—
Gaskens the overseer for the Postell estate. Griffin
was a sober, quiet man, who had been long married,
and found his chief enjoyment in the bosom of his
family. Gaskens loved the race-turf and the cockpit,
and his soul was full of their associations. It is the
instinct of vice to hate the form of virtue, or that habit
which so nearly resembles her, as to desire no exciting
indulgences, no forced stimulants, no unwonted
and equivocal enjoyments. Griffin partook of none
of those pleasures which were all-in-all to Gaskens,

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and the other hated him accordingly. But there were
yet other causes for this hostility, in the positive rejection
of his proffered intimacy, which Griffin had
unscrupulously given. Though but a small farmer,
with means exceedingly moderate, the sense of selfrespect,
which industry brought with it to his mind,
taught him to scorn and to avoid the base outrider,
and the dishonest overseer of the neighbouring plantation.
Words, more than once, of an unfriendly temper,
had subsequently fallen between them, but not
with any serious rupture following. Gaskens, finally,
removed to another plantation farther off, and all acquaintance
ceased between them. There he pursued
his old courses; and at length, left without employ,
as he had lost the confidence of all those whom
he had served heretofore in his capacity of overseer,
he had become the regular attendant of the tavern.
The arrival of the British forces, the siege and the
surrender of Charlestown, with the invasion of the
state by foreign mercenaries, presented him with a
new field for action; and, with thousands of others,
to whom all considerations were as nothing—weighed
against the love of low indulgence, unrestrained power,
and a profligate lust for plunder—he did not scruple to
adopt the cause which was strongest, and most likely to
procure those objects for which his appetite most craved.
He became a furious loyalist, mustered his party, and
became the assessor of his neighbours' estates. The
fortune which threw into his hands the person of
Griffin revived the old grudge; and the stout defence
made by his prisoner, determined him upon a measure
but too often adopted in that saturnalia of crime, the
tory warfare in Carolina, to excite much attention or
provoke many scruples in the party employing it.
With a spiteful malignity which belongs to the vulgar
mind, he had ridden along by the side of his captive;
and finding, as he rode, that the presence of his wife
and daughter was a consolation still, he ordered them
to the rear with the other prisoners, not permitting
them to approach, or even to speak with him. As he

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rode along by him, he taunted him with the low remark
and the insolent sneer at his present fortune,
compared with his own, and with the past. The
wounded man, with his hands tied behind him, could
only demonstrate his scorn by an occasional sentence
from his lips, while his eye, gleaming with the collected
vengeance of his heart, spoke well what the
other might expect, were they only permitted a fair
field and equal footing for contest.

“Yes, you d—d rebel, you see what's come of your
obstinacy and insolence. You fly in the face of the
king and refuse to obey his laws; and now you have
your pay. By G—d, but it does my heart good to see
you in this pickle.”

“Coward! if I could lay hands on you but for two
minutes—only two minutes, Amos Gaskens—and by
the Eternal, chopped up as I am, you should never have
it in your power to say again to an honest man what
you have said to me.”

“Two minutes, do you say?” said the other—“two
minutes? You shall have two minutes, Griffin—two
minutes, as you ask; but they shall be for prayer, and
not for fighting. I remember you of old, and you shall
pay off to-day a long score that's been running up
against you. You remember when I was overseer to
John Postell, and you gave me to know you didn't
want to see me at your house, though that was a loghouse
like my own? I wasn't good enough for you,
nor for yours, eh? What do you say now?”

“The same. I hold you worse now than I did then.
And then I didn't despise you because you was poor,
for, as you say, I was poor myself; but because I
thought you a rascal, and since then I know'd it. You
are worse now.”

“Talk on—I give you leave, you d—d rebel—and
that's a mercy you don't deserve; but I have you in
my power, and it won't be long you'll have to talk. I
wonder what your pride comes to now, when I, Amos
Gaskens, who wasn't good enough for you and your
daughter, have only to say the word, and it's all dicky

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with both of you. You yourself—you can't stir a hand
but at my orders; and look there—that's your wife and
daughter—and what can you do for 'em, if I only gives
the word to the boys to do their likes to them?”

“Villain!—monster!” cried the prisoner, vainly
struggling with his bonds. But he writhed in them in
vain. The tyrant looked down upon him from his
horse with a grin of delight which completed the fury
of the victim, until he rushed, though with a fruitless
vengeance, against the sides of the animal, idly expending
his strength in an innoxious and purposeless
effort against his persecutor. A blow from the back
of his sabre drove him back, while, as he reeled among
the troop, a shriek and a rush from the wife and
daughter in the rear, at the same moment, announced
their consciousness of the proceeding.

“Two minutes you shall have, my boy—two minutes,
as you asked for them,” said Gaskens to the prisoner,
as they now approached the spring.

“Two minutes for what?” he inquired.

“For prayer—and quite long enough for one that's
passed so good a life as you,” was the sneering reply.

“What mean you?” was the farther inquiry of the
prisoner.

He pointed to the huge oak that surmounted the
spring, and at the same moment a corporal approached
with a rope, the running noose of which, as this agent
was frequently in requisition, was already made, and
now swung ostentatiously in his hands.

“Great God! Amos Gaskens, wretch as you are,
you do not mean to do this murder?”

“May I be totally d—d if I do not. You shall hang
to that tree in two minutes after I say the word, or
there are no snakes.”

“You dare not, ruffian. I claim to be a prisoner
of war—I appeal to the troop.”

“Appeal and be d—d. My troop know better than
to disobey the orders of a lawful officer in commission
of his majesty; and as for your being a prisoner of
war, that's a lie. You are a murderer, and I have

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proof enough of it. But that's neither here nor there.
I will answer for all I have done to the commander of
the Dorchester post, and if you can make him hear
your voice at this distance, you have a better pipe than
my rope has touched yet—that's all. So, to your
prayers, while I take a sup of this water. Here, boy,
hold the bridle.”

The wretch descended, and the boy reined up the
steed, while the former moved onward to the spring.
The corporal approached the doomed victim, and was
about to pass the loop over his head; but he resisted
by every effort in his power.

“Great God!—but this is not in earnest? Hear
me, Amos Gaskens—hear me, man! Monster! are
you not ashamed to sport in this way with the feelings
of my poor wife and child?”

“Do your duty, corporal, or blast me but I run you
up, though I have to do it myself. You shall know
whether I am not good enough for your d—d log-cabin
now, or not. Two minutes, corporal—only two minutes,
and a short cord—remember—two minutes, I say—
no more.”

With the assistance of two of the tory squad, Griffin
was thrown upon his back, and lay struggling upon the
ground, while the rope was adjusted to his neck.

“My wife! my child!—let them come to me, Amos
Gaskens—let them see me, Gaskens—man or devil!
Will you not suffer them to come to me?—let me see
and speak to them, I pray you!”

“They will see you better when you are lifted. Be
quick—say your prayers, man, and lose no time. One
minute is almost gone already. Make the most of the
other.”

The ruffian spoke with the coolest indifference,
while mixing a gourd of spirits and water at the spring.
This done, he ascended the hill, bearing the liquor in
his hand, and bade the execution proceed. They
hauled the victim by the rope up the little rising, and
towards the tree, almost strangling him before he
reached the spot. In the mean while the air was rent
with the shrieks of his wife and daughter in the hollow,

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where they were pressed with the other prisoners,
whom the guard still kept back from any approach to
the doomed man, then about to be separated from them
for ever. He cried to them by name, in a thick, choking
voice, for the rope was now drawn, by the party hauling
him along, with a suffocating tightness.

“Ellen!—Ellen, my wife! Oh, Ellen, my poor
child! Amos Gaskens—God remember you for this!
Oh, Ellen! God help me! Have you no mercy,
monster—none?” he screamed to his murderer, in
agony.

“Father, dear father!” cried the girl. The mother
had simply stretched forth her hands as she beheld the
threatened movement, and overpowered by her emotions,
had fallen senseless in the effort to speak. The
daughter strove to rush forward, but the strong-armed
sentinel rudely thrust her back with a heavy hand, and
pressed her down with the rest of the prisoners, who
had been made to file into the grove of tallow bushes,
which the prescience of Singleton had prudently assigned
them. Gasping, but struggling to the last, the
victim had been already drawn up by his executioner,
within a few feet of the broad limb stretching over the
spring, which was to serve the purpose of a gallows; and
the brutal leader of the party, standing upon the little eminence—
the liquor in hand, which he was stirring, yet
untasted—had already declared the time to be elapsed
which he allowed to the prisoner for the purposes of
prayer, when, distinctly and clear, the voice of Singleton
was heard—above the shrieks of the daughter—above
the hoarse cries of the prisoner in parting to his wife—
above all the bustle of the transaction. The single
word, as given to the boy Frampton, was uttered; and,
in the next instant, came the sharp, thrilling crack of
the rifle, fatally aimed, and striking the legitimate
victim. The body of Gaskens, between whose eyes
the bullet had passed—the word unspoken—the draught
in his hand untasted—tumbled forward, prostrate, immoveable,
upon the form of his reprieved victim, whom,
still struggling, but half strangled, the corporal had
just dragged beneath the fatal tree.