he has gone to the wood, but there is no need for getting into a passion,
and that on no account would it be advisable to fire the stack. "Won't we
though?" cries one of the party. "We'll burn the rebel out of house and
home," and thrusting his torch into the straw it is ablaze in an instant.
The crowd hurries away toward the wood, and does not hear the stifled
groan that comes out of the middle of the fire. Gates takes a paper from
his pocket, and, after reading it for the last time, flings it upon the
flame. It bears the inscription, "Isaac Gates, Traitor and Spy, hung by
three soldiers of his majesty's army. Isaac Mayland."

From his moody contemplation he rouses with a start, for Mayland's
daughter is there. Her eyes are bent on a distorted thing that lies among
the embers, and in the dying light of the flames it seems to move. She
studies it close, then with a cry of pain and terror she falls upon the
hot earth, and her senses go out, not to be regained in woful years. With
head low bowed, Gilbert Gates trudges away. In the fight at Brandywine
next day, Black Samson, a giant negro, armed with a scythe, sweeps his
way through the red ranks like a sable figure of Time. Mayland had taught
him; his daughter had given him food. It is to avenge them that he is
fighting. In the height of the conflict he enters the American ranks
leading a prisoner--Gilbert Gates. The young man is pale, stern, and
silent. His deed is known, he is a spy as well as a traitor, but he asks
no mercy. It is rumored that next day he alone, of the prisoners, was led
to a wood and lashed by arms and legs to a couple of hickory trees that
had been bent by a prodigious effort and tied together by their tops. The
lashing was cut by a rifle-ball, the trees regained their straight
position with a snap like whips, and that was the way Gilbert Gates came
to his end.