Fire to roof-trees, death to men, through the Bergen valleys bearing.
In the midnight deep and dark came his vengeance darker, deeper—
At the watch-dog’s sudden bark woke in terror every sleeper;
Till at length the farmers brown, wasting time no more on tillage,
Swore these ruffians of the crown, fiends of murder, fire, and pillage,
Should be chased by every path to the dens where they had banded,
And no prayers should soften wrath when they caught the bloody-handed
Jack, the Regular.
One by one they slew his men: still the chief their chase evaded;
He had vanished from their ken, by the fiend or fortune aided—