PRESENTIMENT OF POOL’S DEATH.
Awhile after sunset, Stoughton, Pool and I were sitting on the gallery, talking very low, about the way we should have to manage. We were fearful Harvey was not at home, or had left the country. Some of us were eating figs and some eating peaches. All of a sudden our attention was arrested by a large white fowl, which passed through the yard some fifteen or twenty yards from us. It was a kind of fowl that I had never seen before, nor had either of my comrades, as they asserted. It walked some ten or fifteen yards; we rose to get a more minute view, and it took flight and ascended, until we lost sight of it in the distance. This seemed to strike Pool with terror and amazement, and he reflected a few minutes and said, “Boys, I shall be a dead man before to-morrow night! That is an omen of my death!”
Stoughton laughed and said to Pool, that if he was a dead man he would make a very noisy corpse; but Pool still insisted that it was a signal of his death, and urged hard that we should leave that place, and retire to one more secluded. “I did wrong,” said he, “in making fire in the house.” We tried to laugh him out of his predictions, but all to no purpose; and sure enough, as he had conjectured, before the next night he was a corpse.
The Famous Harvey Battle.—[See [page 103].
Just before dark, Stoughton went to where brother John was stationed, and they both remained until after dark; they then came up to the house, and Stoughton mounted guard. All this time Pool appeared to be in a deep study and had nothing to say, appeared dejected and low spirited. We all laid down, except Stoughton, to try to sleep; I could see Pool and John; they could not sleep. The moon rose two or three hours before day, and I got into a doze several times and each time the most huge serpents would be after me, that I ever beheld. This would waken me, and finally I got up and walked about; I found Pool was up. Stoughton said he could not sleep, and brother John got up and said he could not sleep. We then consulted together and Pool was for leaving the place before day. Stoughton objected, and said, “Let’s wait until eight or nine o’clock in the morning; after Harvey gets his breakfast he may come to the orchard for fruit. If he does not come by this time, we may leave.”
Daylight made its appearance not long after that, and shortly after the sun rose, and poor Pool said after the sun had risen above the horizon: “How beautiful the sun looks this morning; the sky looks so pure, clear and serene!” Poor fellow! It was the last sun that he ever beheld encircling this earth.