When they had eaten and drunk their fill, the greater portion of the guests were assembled at the front door. From this position there was to be seen, at no great distance, a small inclosure of not above ten feet square, constructed with a dark paling, above which a venerable willow drooped its branches. Towards this inclosure some five or six of the revellers repaired, to gratify an idle and, at present, a maudlin curiosity. When they arrived here, they leaned across the paling to read the inscription upon a stone that seemed but recently to have been placed there. It was a simple memorial of the death of Colonel Markham, of the Carolina militia, which was recorded to have taken place but eighteen months before on the Savannah river in an engagement with the troops under General Prevost. To this was added, in the spirit of the times and in accordance with the sentiments of the Whig leaders in the war of independence, a bitter expression of censure upon the barbarous disposition of the enemy, couched in homely but earnest phrase, and speaking the hate of the survivors in the same sentence that commended the virtues of the dead.
It was an unpropitious moment for such a tablet to meet the eye of those who gazed upon it; and when it was read aloud by the captain of a troop, whose natural temper, rendered savage by the rudeness of the war, was also at this moment exasperated almost to intoxication by the freedom of the table, he vented his curses in loud and coarse rage against the memory of him to whom the stone was dedicated. This fire of passion spread through the group around the tomb, and each man responded to the first execration by others still deeper and more fierce. Proclaiming the inscription to be an insult, they made an attack upon the paling, which was instantly demolished, and, seizing upon the largest stones at hand, they assailed the tablet with such effect as soon to break it in pieces; and then, with a useless malice, applied themselves to obliterating the inscription upon the fragments. Whilst engrossed with the perpetration of this sacrilege, their attention was suddenly aroused by the near report of a pistol, the ball of which, it was discovered, had struck into the trunk of the willow.
"I will kill some of the scoundrels, if I die for it!" was the exclamation heard immediately after the shot, and Alfred Markham was seen struggling with an officer who had seized him. The young man had been observed and followed, as he madly rushed from a wing of the mansion towards the burial-place, and arrested at the moment that he was levelling a second pistol.
"Henry, shoot him down!" he screamed to his companion, who was now approaching armed with his carbine.
"Let me go, sir! I will not see my father's tomb disturbed by ruffians."
"Loose your hands!" cried Henry, directing his passionate defiance to the individual who wrestled with Alfred, "loose your hands, I say, or I will fire upon you!"
"Fire at the drunken villains around my father's grave!" shouted Alfred.
"They shall have it," returned Henry, eagerly, "if it is the last shot I ever make." And with these words the youth levelled his piece at the same group which had before escaped Alfred's aim, but, luckily, the carbine snapped and missed fire. In the next instant Horse Shoe's broad hand was laid upon Henry's shoulder, as he exclaimed, "Why, Master Henry, have you lost your wits? Do you want to bring perdition and combustion both, down upon the heads of the whole house?"
"Galbraith Robinson, stand back!" ejaculated Henry. "I am not in the humor to be baulked."
"Hush—for God's sake, hush!—foolish boy," returned Robinson with real anger. "You are as fierce as a young panther—I am ashamed of you!"