"
With this threat they withdrew to one of their usual places of resort,
until darkness should again give them an opportunity of marauding on the
community without danger of detection.
CHAPTER XI
O wo! O woful, woful, woful day!
Most lamentable day; most woful day,
That ever, ever, I did yet behold!
O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!
Never was seen so black a day as this;
O woful day! O woful day!
--SHAKESPEARE.
The family at the Locusts had slept, or watched, through all the
disturbances at the cottage of Birch, in perfect ignorance of their
occurrence. The attacks of the Skinners were always made with so much
privacy as to exclude the sufferers, not only from succor, but
frequently, through a dread of future depredations, from the
commiseration of their neighbors also. Additional duties had drawn the
ladies from their pillows at an hour somewhat earlier than usual; and
Captain Lawton, notwithstanding the sufferings of his body, had risen in
compliance with a rule from which he never departed, of sleeping but six
hours at a time. This was one of the few points, in which the care of
the human frame was involved, on which the trooper and the surgeon of
horse were ever known to agree.
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