morning. You saw them?'

'A part--where are the rest?'

'Oh, we could not consent to turn them out of their comfortable quarters
this cold night, so we insisted on their remaining, having first gone
through the trifling ceremony of grounding their arms.'

"The greeting between the young soldiers and their more peaceful
relations could not have been more cordial if their hands had been
unstained with blood. Nathaniel proffered refreshments to the whole
detachment; old Anne trembled for her diminished stock of sausages, and
remarked to Elnathan, that it would take a ''tarnal griddle' to bake
cakes for 'all that posse cotatus.' But the offer was declined by the
officer in command, who only desired our friends to take charge of the
wounded Hessian, whom his own men had deserted in the road.

[Illustration: THE OUTLAW OF THE PINES.]

"In the meanwhile, about forty men had assembled at Nathan's summons to
pursue the robbers, some of them having first visited those who had
suffered from the previous night's depredations. In one instance, they
found a farmer tied in his own stable, with his horse gear, and his wife,
with the bed-cord, to some of the furniture in her own apartment. In
another place, the whole household was quietly disposed down a shallow
well, up to their knees in water, and half frozen. In a third, a
solitary man, who was the only inmate at the time, having fled, in his
fright, to the house-top, was left there by the unfeeling thieves, who
secured the trap-door within. But the last party who arrived had a
bloody tale to tell: they had been to the house of Joseph Farr, the