"'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.'
'And have they not taken the sword?
'Let the desolated plain, the blood-soddened valley, the burnt farm-house, blackening in the sun, the sacked village, and the ravaged town, answer; let the whitening bones of the butchered farmer, strewn along the fields of his homestead, answer; let the starving mother, with the babe clinging to the withered breast, that can afford no sustenance, let her answer; with the death-rattle mingling with the murmuring tones that mark the last struggle for life—let the dying mother and her babe answer!
'It was but a day past and our land slept in peace. War was not here—wrong was not here. Fraud, and woe, and misery, and want, dwelt not among us. From the eternal solitude of the green woods arose the blue smoke of the settler's cabin, and golden fields of corn looked forth from amid the waste of the wilderness, and the glad music of human voices awoke the silence of the forest.
'Now! God of mercy, behold the change! Under the shadow of a pretext—under the sanctity of the name of God—invoking the Redeemer to their aid, do these foreign hirelings slay our people! They throng our towns; they darken our plains; and now they encompass our posts on the lonely plain of Chadd's Ford.
"The effect was electric. The keen eye of the in-trepid Wayne flashed fire. The neighboring sentinels, who had paused to listen, quickened their pace, with a proud tread and a nervous feeling, impatient for vengeance on the vandal foe.
"Gathering strength once more, he checked the choking sensations his own recital had caused, and continued:
"'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.'
"Brethren, think me not unworthy of belief, when I tell you that the doom of the Britisher is near! Think me not vain, when I tell you that beyond the cloud that now enshrouds us, I see gathering, thick and fast, the darker cloud and the blacker storm of a Divine retribution!
'They may conquer us on the morrow! Might and wrong may prevail, and we may be driven from this field—but the hour of God's own vengeance will surely come!