The Rangers; or, The Tory's Daughter Part 11

But that court, on whom the subservient attorney and his corrupt and arrogant friend depended to convict an innocent man of an infamous crime, that a private and nefarious object might thereby be enforced--that court were now destined to be arrested in their career of judicial oppression before they had time to add another stain to their already blackened characters: for, at this moment, a deep and piercing groan, issuing from one of the prison-rooms beneath, resounded through the building so fearfully distinct, as to cause every individual of the a.s.sembly to start, and even to bring the judges and officers of the court to a dead pause in their proceedings.

A moment of death-like silence ensued; when another and a sharper groan of anguish, bursting evidently from the same lips, and swelling up to the highest compa.s.s of the human voice, and ending in a prolonged screech of mortal agony, rang through the apartment, sending a thrill of horror to the very hearts of the appalled mult.i.tude!

"Who? What? For G.o.d's sake, what is that?" exclaimed a dozen eager and trembling voices at once, as nearly the whole a.s.sembly started to their feet, and stood with amazed and perplexed countenances, inquiringly gazing at each other.

"Don't your consciences tell you that?" exclaimed the prisoner, Herriot, in a loud, fearless voice, running his stern, indignant eye over the court, its officers, and leading partisans around the bar.

"Don't your consciences tell you what it was? Then I will! It was the death-screech of the poor murdered French, whose tortured spirit, now beyond the reach of your power, went out with that fearful cry which has just a.s.sailed your guilty ears!"

"Mr. Sheriff! Mr. Sheriff!" sputtered Sabin, boiling with wrath, and pointing menacingly to the prisoner.

"Silence, there, blabbing miscreant!" thundered Patterson.

"Ah! No wonder ye want silence, when that name is mentioned," returned Herriot, unflinchingly.

Struck dumb with astonishment at the unexpected audacity of the prisoner in thus throwing out, in open court, such bold and cutting intimations of their guilty conduct, the judges and officers seemed perfectly at a loss how to act, or give vent to their maddened feelings, for some moments. Soon, however, the most prompt and reckless among them found the use of their tongues.

"Shoot him down, Patterson!" exclaimed Brush, with an oath.

"Treason! I charge him with treason, and demand that he be ironed and gagged on the spot!" shouted Gale, bringing down his clinched fist heavily on the desk before him!

"Yes, high treason; let us re-arrest him, and see if we can hang him on that, should he escape on the other charge," chimed in Stearns.

"I have my doubts," began Chandler, who was growing every moment more wavering and uneasy.

"No doubts about it," interrupted Sabin, almost choking with rage.

"I'll not sit here and see the king's authority insulted, and his court treated with such contempt and treasonable defiance; and I order him instantly in irons--chains--yes, chains, Mr. Sheriff!"

"You can chain the body, but shall not fetter the tongue," responded Herriot, in no way dismayed by the threats of his enraged persecutors, or their preparations to confine and torture his person; "for I _will_ speak, and you shall _hear_, ye tyrants! Listen then, ye red-handed a.s.sa.s.sins! The blood of your murdered victim has cried up to G.o.d for vengeance. The cry has been heard! the unseen hand has already traced your doom on the wall! and this day, ay, within this hour," he continued, glancing through the window to a dark ma.s.s of men, who might now be partially discerned drawn up behind the point of woods at the north--"ay, within this very hour, that doom shall be fulfilled!

Hark!" he added, in startling tones, after a momentary pause--"hark!

do ye hear those signal guns, echoing from post to post, round your beleaguered Babylon? Do you hear those shouts? The avengers of blood are even now at your doors. Hear, and tremble!"

As the speaker closed his bold denunciations, he descended from the bench which he had mounted for the purpose, and, advancing to the sheriff and his a.s.sistants, now standing mute and doubtful with their hastily procured fetters in their hands, he paused, and stood confronting them with an ironical smile, and with folded arms, in token of his readiness now to submit himself to their hands. But a wonderful change had suddenly come over the whole band of these tory dignitaries. The dark and angry scowls of mediated revenge, and the more fiery expressions of undisguised wrath, which were bent on the dauntless old man during the first part of his denunciations, had, by the time he made his closing announcement, all given way to looks of surprise and apprehension. No one offered to lay hands on him; for, as the truth of what he said was every moment more strongly confirmed by the increasing tumult without, no one had any thoughts to spare for any but himself. And soon the whole a.s.sembly broke from their places, and, in spite of the loud calls of the officers for silence and order, began to cry out in eager inquiries, and run about the room in the utmost confusion and alarm. At this juncture, David Redding, who had been thus far the most reckless and bloodthirsty tory of all, burst into the room, hurriedly exclaiming,--

"The people have risen in arms, and are pouring in upon us, by hundreds, from every direction! In five minutes this house will be surrounded, and we in their power. Let every man look to his own safety! I shall to mine," he added, rushing back down to the front door, where, instead of attempting to escape through the back way, as he might then have done, he began to shout, "Hurra for Congress!" and, "Down with the British court!" at the very top of his voice.

"I resign my commission," cried Chandler, jumping up in great trepidation. "Let it be distinctly understood," he repeated, raising his voice in his anxiety to be heard--"yes, let it be distinctly understood, that I have resigned my commission as judge of this court."

"D----n him! what does he mean by that?" muttered Gale, turning to Patterson.

"It means he is going to turn tail, as I always thought he would,--the cursed cowardly traitor!" replied the latter, gnashing his teeth. "But let him, and that pitiful poltroon of a Redding, go where they please.

We will see to matters ourselves. I don't believe it is any thing more than a mere mob, who will scatter at the first fire. So follow me, Gale; and all the rest of ye, that aint afraid of your own shadows, follow me, and I'll soon know what can be done."

And, while lawyers and suitors were hastily s.n.a.t.c.hing up their papers, and all were making a general rush for the door, in the universal panic which had seized them, the boastful sheriff, attended by his a.s.sistants and the tiger-tempered Gale, pushed his way down stairs, shaking his sword over his head, and shouting with all his might,--

"To arms! Every friend to the court and king, to arms! Stand to your guns there below, guards, and shoot down every rebel that attempts to enter!"

But, when he reached the front entrance, the spectacle which there greeted his eyes seemed to have an instant effect in cooling his military ardor. There, to his dismay, he beheld drawn up, within thirty paces of the door, an organized and well-armed body of more than three hundred men; while small detachments, constantly arriving, were falling in on the right and left, and extending the wings round the whole building. And as the discomfited loyalist ran his eye along the line of the broad-breasted and fierce-looking fellows before him, and recognized among them the Huntingtons, the Knights, the Stevenses, the Baileys, the Brighams, the Curtises, and other stanch and leading patriots, from nearly every town bordering on the Connecticut, and saw the determined look and the indignant flashing of their countenances, he at once read not only the entire overthrow of his party in this section of the country, but the individual peril in which he, and his abettors in the ma.s.sacre, now stood before an outraged and excited populace.

"What ails your men, Squire Sheriff?" cried Barty Burt, now grown to a soldier in the ranks of the a.s.sailants, as he pointed tauntingly to the company of tory guards who had been stationed in the yard, but who now, sharing in the general panic, had thrown down their arms, and stood huddled together near the door; "why don't they pick up their shooting-irons, and blaze away at the _'d----d rebels,'_ as I think I heard you order, just now?"

"And if that won't ditter do," exclaimed the well-known voice of Tom Dunning from another part of the ranks, "suppose you ditter read another king's proclamation at us: no knowing but we might be ditter done for, entirely."

The sheriff waited to hear no more, but hastily retreated into the house, followed by a shout of derisive laughter; and his place was the next moment occupied by Chandler, who bustled forward to the steps, and, in a fl.u.s.tered, supplicatory manner, asked leave to address his "_respected fellow-citizens_."

"Short speeches, judge!" impatiently cried Colonel Carpenter, who seemed, from his position on horseback among the troops and other appearances, to be chief in command--"short speeches, if any. We have come here on a business which neither long speeches nor smooth ones will prevent us from executing."

The judge, however, could not afford to take this as a repulse; and, with this doubtful license, he went on to say, that on hearing, in the morning, as he did with astonishment and horror, of the unauthorized proceedings of last night, he had denounced the outrage, in an address at the opening of the court; and not finding himself supported, he had resigned, and left his seat on the bench.

"And now," he added in conclusion, "being freed from the trammels of my oath of office, which have lately become so painful to me, I feel myself again one of the people, and stand ready to cooperate with them in any measure required by the public welfare."

A very faint and scattering shout of applause, in two or three places, mingled with hisses and murmurs in others, was the only response with which this address was received. But even with this equivocal testimony of public feeling towards him, this despicable functionary felt gratified. "I _am safe_," said he to himself, with a long-drawn breath, as he descended the steps, to watch an opportunity to mingle with the party with whom he was now especially anxious to be seen, and to whom he was ready to say, in the words of the satirist,--

"I'm all submission, what you'd have me, make me; The only question is, sirs, will you take me?"

At this moment a sash was thrown up, and the prisoner, Herriot, appeared at a window of the court-room above.

"I have been brought up here this morning," he said, shaking back his gray locks, and raising his stern, solemn voice to a pitch clearly audible to all in the grounds below--"I have been brought here from my dungeon to answer to the charge of a foul crime; and both my accusers and triers, fleeing even before any one appeared to pursue, have left their places, having neither tried nor condemned me. But scorning to follow their example, I now appear, to submit myself for a verdict, to the rightful source of all power--the people."

"Neither will we condemn thee," cried Knowlton, pursuing the scriptural thought of the other; "if thy accusers and judges have left thee uncondemned, thou shalt not be condemned by us; at least not by me, who have long had my opinions of the character of this prosecution."

"As also have I," responded Captain Wright. "I know something of the witnesses, on whom, it is said, they depended to convict father Herriot; and I would not hang a dog on their testimony. I move, therefore, that we here p.r.o.nounce a verdict of acquittal. Who says, ay?"

"Ay!" promptly responded a dozen voices; and "Ay!" the next instant rose in one loud, unanimous shout from the whole mult.i.tude.

"A thousand thanks to you, my friends, for your generous confidence in my innocence," returned the old man with emotion; "and, thank G.o.d, your confidence is not misplaced. I was formerly guilty of much, which has cost me many bitter tears of repentance; but there is no blood on _my_ hands, and I will now return to my hermit hut, from which they dragged me, there to pray for the success of the good cause in which you are engaged, leaving to you what lesson shall be taught those Hamans who have filled these dungeons with the dying and wounded, now demanding your care."

The effect of the old man's closing hint was instantly visible on the mult.i.tude, who decided by acclamation to act upon it without delay; and accordingly a score of resolute fellows were detached to proceed to the prisons, release their friends, and fill their places, for the present, with their murderous oppressors.

CHAPTER VIII.

"----right represt, Will heave with the deep earthquake's fierce unrest, Then fling, with fiery strength, the mountain from its breast"

When the besieged tories, who were now mostly crowded together in the broad s.p.a.ce on the lower floor, saw a column of their a.s.sailants entering the front door, and advancing upon them with levelled muskets to sacrifice them, as they supposed, on the spot, they were seized with a fresh and uncontrollable panic, and made such a tremendous rush for the back entrance, that the only sentry who happened at that moment to be there, was, in spite of all his threats to fire upon them, instantly borne down, or thrust aside, by the living torrent that now burst through the door; and before a force sufficient to stop them could reach the spot, numbers had escaped into the adjoining fields, where, scattering in different directions, they commenced their disorderly flight, with all the speed which their guilty terrors could lend them. The next moment, however, as the cry that the tories were escaping was raised, a hundred of their most fleet-footed opponents were seen leaping the fences into the fields, and giving chase to the frightened fugitives. A scene, in which the ludicrous, the novel, the wild, and the fearful, were strangely mingled, now ensued; for, although a strong guard still retained their places round the Court House, who, with the detachment that had entered as we have described, proceeded to take into custody the remaining tories and liberate the imprisoned, yet the main body of the revolutionists joined in the work of hunting down the flying enemy; those not only who had escaped from the Court House in the manner we have named, but all concerned in the ma.s.sacre that could be found secreted or lurking about the village; while the exulting shouts of the victors as they overtook, seized, and brought to the ground the vanquished; the abject cries of the latter for quarter; the reports of muskets fired by pursuers over the heads of the pursued, to frighten them to surrender; the beating on drums, and the loud clamor of mingling voices,--all combined to swell the uproar and confusion of the exciting scene.

"How like the ditter deuse these lawyers do scratch gravel!" exclaimed Tom Dunning, as he singled out and gave chase to Stearns and Knights, who together were making their way across the fields, in the direction of the river, as if life and death hung on their speed. "Ha! ha!"

continued the tickled hunter, laughing so immoderately at the novel spectacle, as greatly to impede his own progress--"ha! ha! ha! ha!

Why, I der don't believe but what they've got consciences, after all!

for what else could make their ditter drumsticks fly so?"

But although the hunter, in thus indulging his merriment, suffered himself actually to lose ground in the race, yet he had no notion of relinquishing the chase, or losing the game; for, conscious of his own powers, and thinking lightly of those of the fugitives, he supposed, that, as soon as he chose to exert himself, he could easily make the race a short one, and as easily capture and lead them back in triumph; and he began to think over the jokes he would crack at their expense on the way. But the unseen event of the next moment showed him, to his vexation, that his inaction, and confidence in his own powers to remedy the consequences of it, had cost him all the antic.i.p.ated pleasures of his expected victory. For scarcely had he commenced the pursuit in earnest, when the fugitive lawyers reached the bank of the river, and at the very place too, as it provokingly happened, where his own log-canoe chanced to be moored, and hastily leaping into it, they managed with such dexterity and quickness, in handling the oars and cutting the fastenings, as to push off, and get fairly out of the reach of their pursuer, before he could gain the spot; and his threat to fire at them, if they did not return, and the execution of that threat the next moment, which sent a bullet skipping over the water within a foot of the receding canoe, as he only intended, were all without effect in compelling the return of the panic-struck attorneys.

And the balked pursuer had soon the mortification to see his crafty brace of intended captives land in safety on the opposite sh.o.r.e, which he had now no means of gaining, and disappear in the dark pine forest then lining the eastern bank of the Connecticut at this place.

"Outwitted, by ditter Judas!" exclaimed the hunter, in his vexation.

"These lawyers, dog 'em! they have so much of the Old Scratcher in 'em, that they will outdo a fellow at his own trade. However, I've done the new state some ditter service, I reckon, seeing I've fairly driven such a precious pair of 'em out of it." [Footnote: Knights, who, unlike his companion, was no loyalist, appears to have become infected with the panic that had seized his loyal a.s.sociates, in common with the whole court party; and, though he had no cause for alarm, fled with those who escaped from the Court House, on this memorable occasion. It is probable, that owing to his supposed interest in the continuance of the court, and consequent unwillingness to co-operate in the measures on foot to overthrow it, he was purposely kept in ignorance of the movements of the revolutionists, and therefore taken wholly by surprise when the storm burst. At all events, his speedy return, immediate resumption of his professional duties at Brattleborough, and subsequent promotion to the bench, abundantly shows that he no less enjoyed the confidence of the American party than his two namesakes, and, we believe, relatives, whom we have named as present among the a.s.sailants, and who were afterwards officers in our revolutionary forces. An aged and distinguished early settler, to whom the author is indebted for many of the incidents he has here delineated, thus writes in relation to the particular one in question:--

"I have heard Judge Samuel Knights, who, as chief justice, presided in the Supreme Court from 1791 to 1793, describe the trepidation that seized them, when, after the ma.s.sacre, and on the rising of the surrounding country, they came to learn the excited state of the populace. He related how he and another member of the bar (Stearns, I think, who was afterwards attorney secretary of Nova Scotia) hurried down to the river, and finding there a boat, (such as was used in those times for carrying seines or nets at the shad and salmon fishing grounds, which were frequent on both sides the river, below the Great Falls,) they paddled themselves across, and lay all day under a log in the pine forest opposite the town; and, when night came, went to Parson Fessenden's, at Walpole, and obtained a horse, so that, by riding and tying, they got out of the country till the storm blew over, when Knights returned to Brattleborough."]