Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, vol 3 | Page 7

of an enemy!
Why had fate decreed that they should be enemies? For Waldemar is
the half-brother of Percy. His mother was the Indian girl that the earl,
now passing his last days in England, had deceived with a pretended
marriage, and the letters promise patronage to her son. The half-breed
digs a grave that night with his own hands and lays the form of his
brother in it.

SAVED BY THE BIBLE
It was on the day after the battle of Germantown that Warner, who
wore the blue, met his hated neighbor, the Tory Dabney, near that
bloody field.
By a common impulse the men fell upon each other with their knives,
and Warner soon had his enemy in a position to give him the
death-stroke, but Dabney began to bellow for quarter. "My brother
cried for quarter at Paoli," answered the other, "and you struck him to
the heart."
"I have a wife and child. Spare me for their sakes."
"My brother had a wife and two children. Perhaps you would like to
beg your life of them."
Though made in mockery, this proposition was caught at so earnestly
that Warner at length consented to take his adversary, firmly bound, to
the house where the bereaved family was living. The widow was
reading the Bible to her children, but her grief was too fresh to gather
comfort from it. When Dabney was flung into the room he grovelled at
her feet and begged piteously for mercy. Her face did not soften, but
there was a kind of contempt in the settled sadness of her tone as she
said, "It shall be as God directs. I will close this Bible, open it at chance,
and when this boy shall put his finger at random on a line, by that you
must live or die."
The book was opened, and the child put his finger on a line: "That man
shall die."
Warner drew his knife and motioned his prisoner to the door. He was
going to lead him into the wood to offer him as a sacrifice to his
brother's spirit.
"No, no!" shrieked the wretch. "Give me one more chance; one more!
Let the girl open the book."
The woman coldly consents, and when the book is opened for the
second time she reads, "Love your enemies." There are no other words.
The knife is used, but it is to cut the prisoner's bonds, and he walks
away with head hung down, never more to take arms against his
countrymen. And glad are they all at this, when the husband is brought
home--not dead, though left among the corpses at Paoli, but alive and
certain of recovery, with such nursing as his wife will give him. After
tears of joy have been shed she tells him the story of the Bible

judgment, and all the members of the family fall on their knees in
thanksgiving that the blood of Dabney is not upon their heads.

PARRICIDE OF THE WISSAHICKON
Farmer Derwent and his four stout sons set off on an autumn night for
the meeting of patriots at a house on the Wissahickon,--a meeting that
bodes no good to the British encamped in Philadelphia, let the red-coats
laugh as they will at the rag-tag and bob-tail that are joining the army
of Mr. Washington in the wilds of the Skippack. The farmer sighs as he
thinks that his younger son alone should be missing from the company,
and wonders for the thousandth time what has become of the boy. They
sit by a rock that juts into the road to trim their lantern, and while they
talk together they are startled by an exclamation. It is from Ellen, the
adopted daughter of Derwent and the betrothed of his missing son. On
the night that the boy stole away from his father's house he asked her to
meet him in this place in a year's time, and the year is up to-night.
But it is not to meet him that she is hastening now: she has heard that
the British have learned of the patriot gathering and will try to make
prisoners of the company. Even as she tells of this there is a sound to
the southward: the column is on the march. The farmer's eye blazes
with rage and hate. "Boys," he says, "yonder come those who intend to
kill us. Let them taste of their own warfare. Stand here in the shadow
and fire as they pass this rock."
The troopers ride on, chuckling over their sure success, when there is a
report of rifles and four of the red-coats are in the dust. The survivors,
though taken by surprise, prove their courage by halting to answer the
volley, and one of them springs from his saddle,