“My father had a logic of his own. ‘Show me a Reformer,’ he used to say, ‘and I’ll show you a Radical; show me a Radical, and I’ll show you a rebel; show me a rebel, and I’ll show you a traitor to his country and his Queen; and a man who is untrue to his Queen is untrue to his God.’ He always declared he could smell a Radical in the next concession. A sword on one side of his bed and a gun on the other, and it was death to anyone who touched either. He always called my mother madame. ‘Madame, do you remember so and so?’ ‘Madame, is dinner ready?’ He was a volunteer in 1812, and, like many other loyal-hearted men, had to leave wife and family to look after themselves as best they might. He took part in all the chief battles then, and often was away for a month at a time. It was during one of these absences that McArthur’s freebooters, infamous marauders, plundered the country, pretending they were a branch of the United States army. When they got to our house they first of all removed a baking of bread, taking off the oven doors to do so; then they emptied the feather-beds on the brush-heap, and filled the ticks with cornstalks for fodder; they took our best blankets to cover their horses, and stole the silverware and valuables. They then destroyed what they could not carry away; one, more infamous than the rest, hurled a tomahawk through a large and valuable mirror. Some time afterwards, a Loyalist, when passing Colonel Talbot’s, saw a little copper tea-kettle hanging in a tree and a silver spoon with it, and Colonel Talbot recognized the crest on the spoon--a lamb encircled with a wreath--and the things were returned. My mother had buried what she could--her own clothes and whatever she could manage to secrete--and put brush over the place, and anything not lucky enough to be buried was taken. My father’s sister was alone when the marauders reached her house, so she called as loudly as she could, ‘John, Joe, Dick, all of you, make haste down--here they are!’ as if she was just waiting for them. She was a very resolute woman. Then she took down an old musket that always hung on two wooden hooks, rested it on the window-sill and fired at random; but random happened to be a good mark. The leader of the gang was at that moment riding towards the window, and the charge nearly carried off his horse’s leg; the animal fell, and remained there till it died. Then the whole party of these moss-troopers, who were alarmed as much by her shouts as by the shot, thought they had to encounter a number of men in the house, and made off as fast as they could. This was the time that Colonel Burwell’s place was burned and that Colonel Talbot made such a narrow escape from the same party. Colonel Burwell was ill with fever and ague; they took him prisoner and sent him to Chilicothe, where they left for him some time. They burnt his house, but his wife, after sending a message to Colonel Talbot to advise him of their coming, made her escape on her Indian pony.