THE BRIDE OF THE BATTLE.
A SOUTHERN NOVELET.
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BY W. GILMORE SIMMS.
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(Continued from page 29.)
CHAPTER IV.
The moment she had disappeared from the kitchen, the negro was taken forth by the captain of loyalists, who by this time had surrounded himself with nearly all his band. A single soldier had been stationed by Clymes between the house and kitchen, in order to arrest the approach of any of the whites from the former to the scene where Brough was about to pass a certain painful ordeal. The stout old African doggedly, with a single shake of his head, obeyed his captors, as they ordered him to a neighboring wood—a small copse of scrubby oaks, that lay between the settlement and the swamp forest along the river. Here, without delay, Brough was commanded, on pain of rope and hickory, to deliver up the secret of Richard Coulter’s hiding-place. But the old fellow had promised to be faithful. He stubbornly refused to know or to reveal any thing. The scene which followed is one that we do not care to describe in detail. The reader must imagine its particulars. Let it suffice that the poor old creature was haltered by the neck, and drawn up repeatedly to the swinging limb of a tree, until the moral nature, feeble at best, and overawed by the terrors of the last mortal agony, surrendered in despair. Brough consented to conduct the party to the hiding-place of Richard Coulter.
The savage nature of Matthew Dunbar was now in full exercise.