"Who hoisted that rebel flag?"
"I raised that flag," coolly answered Mrs. Day, looking the angry officer full in the face.
"Pull it down!" roared the Briton.
"I shall not do it," firmly answered Mrs. Day.
"You don't know who I am," angrily growled the officer.
"Yes, I do," said the courageous woman.
Cunningham (for it was he) seized the halyards, and attempted to pull down the flag, when Mrs. Day flew at him with her broom, and beat him so severely over the head that she knocked off his hat, and made the powder fly from his wig. "I saw it shine like a dim nimbus around his head in the morning sun," said Anderson.
Cunningham was an Irishman, detested by everybody for his cruelty to American prisoners in his charge. Mrs. Day had often seen him. He stormed, and swore, and tugged in vain at the halyards, for they had become entangled; and Mrs. Day applied her broomstick so vigorously that the blustering Provost-Marshal was finally compelled to beat a retreat, leaving the American flag floating in triumph in the crisp November air over the well-defended Day castle.
This was the last battle between the British and Americans in the old war for independence.