The yeoman's iron hand!"


Leaving Woodburn to the hot and eager pursuit that patriotism and
private animosity had prompted him to undertake, we will now precede
him a few miles on the road, for the purpose of introducing and
accompanying another old acquaintance, who was also destined to become
an actor in the wild and stirring adventures of the night.

Near the southern confines of Manchester, about nine o'clock, the same
evening, a youth of the probable age of twenty, of a sandy complexion,
and of a rather slight, but evidently tough, wiry frame, with a short
rifle on his shoulder, and powder-horn and ball-pouch slung at his
back, was making his solitary way on foot along the main road towards
the town just mentioned. As he now reached the Batenkill, where the
stream, here first beginning to find a more peaceful flow, after its
headlong descent from the Green Mountains, intersected the road, he
suddenly paused and began to muse, with the air of one who has been
struck by some new thought tending to divert him from his settled
purposes; and, slowly passing on to the bridge, which, after the rude
construction of the times, had been thrown across the river at this
place, he took a seat on one of the side-timbers, or binders, as they
were usually termed, and, in accordance with an old and inveterate
habit, generated probably by the peculiar circumstances of his early
life, began to commune with himself aloud.

"I wonder what this new business is they want you should do Bart?
Harry said it was a secret matter when he handed over the paper," he
continued, pulling out and abstractedly unrolling a small wad of white
paper, "a kinder private commission, or something, which he would