“Ah! dear Tom, I knew I should find you the nearest man to the enemy.”
“Softly, softly; handle me tenderly,” replied the lieutenant. “No; there is a brave fellow still nearer than myself, and who he can be I know not. He rushed out of our smoke, near my platoon, to make a prisoner or some such thing, but, poor fellow, he never came back; there he lies just over the hillock. I have spoken to him several times, but I fancy he is past answering.”
Dunwoodie went to the spot, and to his astonishment beheld the stranger.
“It is the old man who knew my father and mother,” cried the youth; “for their sake he shall have honorable burial. Lift him, and let him be carried in; his bones shall rest on native soil.”
The men approached to obey. He was lying on his back, with his face exposed to the glaring light of the fusee; his eyes were closed, as if in slumber; his lips, sunken with years, were slightly moved from their position, but it seemed more like a smile than a convulsion which had caused the change. A soldier’s musket lay near him; his hands were pressed upon his breast, and one of them contained a substance that glittered like silver. Dunwoodie stooped, and moving the limbs, perceived the place where the bullet had found a passage to his heart. The subject of his last care was a tin box, through which the fatal lead had gone; and the dying moments of the old man must have been passed in drawing it from his bosom. Dunwoodie opened it, and found a paper in which, to his astonishment, he read the following:
“Circumstances of political importance, which involve the lives and fortunes of many, have hitherto kept secret what this paper now reveals. Harvey Birch has for years been a faithful and unrequited[143] servant of his country. Though man does not, may God reward him for his conduct!
“Geo. Washington.”
It was the Spy of the Neutral Ground, who died as he had lived, devoted to his country, and a martyr to her liberties.