“‘Charles—­boys—­what means—­’

’Nothing, father, except that we paid the Hessians a friendly visit this morning.  You saw them?’

‘A part—­where are the rest?’

’Oh, we could not consent to turn them out of their comfortable quarters this cold night, so we insisted on their remaining, having first gone through the trifling ceremony of grounding their arms.’

“The greeting between the young soldiers and their more peaceful relations could not have been more cordial if their hands had been unstained with blood.  Nathaniel proffered refreshments to the whole detachment; old Anne trembled for her diminished stock of sausages, and remarked to Elnathan, that it would take a ‘’tarnal griddle’ to bake cakes for ‘all that posse cotatus.’  But the offer was declined by the officer in command, who only desired our friends to take charge of the wounded Hessian, whom his own men had deserted in the road.

[Illustration:  THE OUTLAW OF THE PINES.]

“In the meanwhile, about forty men had assembled at Nathan’s summons to pursue the robbers, some of them having first visited those who had suffered from the previous night’s depredations.  In one instance, they found a farmer tied in his own stable, with his horse gear, and his wife, with the bed-cord, to some of the furniture in her own apartment.  In another place, the whole household was quietly disposed down a shallow well, up to their knees in water, and half frozen.  In a third, a solitary man, who was the only inmate at the time, having fled, in his fright, to the house-top, was left there by the unfeeling thieves, who secured the trap-door within.  But the last party who arrived had a bloody tale to tell:  they had been to the house of Joseph Farr, the sexton to a neighboring Baptist church; a reputation for the possession of concealed gold proved fatal to him.  On entering his house, the door of which stood open, the party sent to his relief stumbled over his body.  After having most cruelly beaten him, in the hope of extorting the gold he was said to possess, the murderers, upon his positive denial, pierced him in twenty places with their bayonets.  The old bedridden wife was still alive in her bed, though the blood had soaked through the miserable pallet and run in a stream into the fire-place.  Their daughter, a woman of fifty years, fled from the house as the murderers entered, and was pursued by one of them, nearly overtaken, and even wounded in the arm by his bayonet; but his foot slipped in making the thrust, and she escaped slightly hurt.

“This bloody business aroused the whole country; a persevering and active pursuit was commenced.  The murderers had many miles to traverse before they could reach a safe retreat, and were obliged to lighten themselves of their heavier plunder in the chase.  Four were shot down in the pursuit; the knapsack of a fifth was found partly concealed in a thicket, and pierced with a ball, which had also penetrated a large