"He replied, 'I am a friend and wish to see General Clinton.'
"The man was a Tory, bearing a message from Sir Henry Clinton to Burgoyne, who was at that time hedged up in Saratoga. This messenger supposed the American forces on the Hudson to be utterly broken and destroyed; and, as the British never gave our officers their titles in speaking of or to them, he thought General Clinton must belong to the British Army, so believed himself among his friends.
"He was taken to Clinton's quarters, and when he was ushered into that officer's presence he perceived his mistake. 'I am lost!' he exclaimed to himself in a low but audible tone, and hastily taking something from his pocket, swallowed it, evidently with some difficulty. This aroused the suspicions of those about him; a physician was summoned, and gave the prisoner a powerful dose of tartar emetic."
"Why, grandma, what a foolish fellow he was to take it!" exclaimed
Eric Leland.
"I think it was administered surreptitiously," she replied, "in a glass of wine or beer probably, without letting him know their suspicions or intentions. I have been giving you Lossing's version of the affair, but years ago I read another, going rather more into detail. It said the patriots did not let the Tory know their suspicions of him, but, acting as if they thought him all right, invited him to eat with them, and secretly put the tartar emetic in the drink furnished him at the meal; that he grew very sick after drinking it, left the table, and went out of doors. They watched him secretly and saw that after getting rid of what he had eaten he covered it with some chips. When he had gone back to his companions at the table some of them went out, scraped away the chips, and found the silver bullet. Lossing says he (the Tory) succeeded in swallowing it a second time and refused to take another emetic until Governor Clinton threatened to hang him upon a tree and have his stomach searched with a surgeon's knife. At that he yielded, and the bullet presently again appeared.
"It was a curiously wrought, hollow sphere, with a compound screw in the centre; inside of it was a note from Sir Henry Clinton to General Burgoyne, written from Fort Montgomery, telling of their success, and expressing the hope that it might facilitate his (Burgoyne's) operations.
"This made the guilt of the prisoner very clear. He was not allowed to escape, and when, soon afterward, Governor Clinton marched with his troops to the help of the people of Esopus, or Kingston, he took the spy with him; and at Hurley, a few miles from Kingston, they tried, condemned the spy, and hung him on an apple tree near the old church. The British had reached Kingston first, and it was then in flames."
"Oh, what a dreadful thing war is!" sighed Grace. "So many people are killed, and so many others robbed of everything but life."
"It is, indeed, an awful thing," assented Grandma Elsie. "May we of this land never again know anything of its horrors by experience."