O’er the matted brush and boulders till the clearing came in view.
Oh, such a sight[106] of ruin! oh, such a ghastly scene!
Stark, dead,[107] lay Joe and Edith on the charred and trampled green.
Crouching down ’mid the bushes they watched the painted fiends,
Watched with the strange, grim calmness that despair so often lends;
“My child! my child!” then springing from the group like astartled deer,
Kate rushed[108] o’er the red-lit clearing ere one could interfere—
The hideous, screeching cut-throats had captured little Nell;
But, when they saw her mother, they stood bound, as by a spell.
“Spare![109] oh, spare my darling! Here, pierce me,[110] strike me dead![111]