Ah, woe to your white hair, old hunter, When powder and bullet be done; You shall die by the slowest of tortures When these shall the battle have won. Look then to your Maker for mercy, The Mingo will surely have none. V. A shout! ’tis the neighbors returning! Now, Mingos, in terror fall back! It is well that your sinews are lusty, And well that no vigor ye lack; He is best who in motion is fleetest When the white man is out on his track. Oh, then fell around them a terror; Oh, then how the enemy ran; For each hunter, in chosen position, With coolness of vengeance began To take a good aim with his rifle, And send a sure shot to his man. Oh, then there was racing and chasing, And fastly they hurried away; They feared at those husbands and fathers, And dared not stand boldly at bay; And in front of his men, Kiskepila Ran slightly the fastest they say. And well for the lives of the wretches They fly from the brunt of the fight; And well for their lives that around them Are falling the shadows of night; For life is in distance and darkness, And death in the nearness and light. But deep was the woe of the hunters, And dark was the cloud o’er their life; For some had been riven of children, And some of both children and wife; And woe to the barbarous Mingo, If either should meet him in strife. John Lewis said, calmly and coldly, When gazing that eve on the slain— “We will bury our dead on the morrow, But let these red rascals remain; And the wandering wolves and the buzzards Will not of our kindness complain.” Years after, when men called John Lewis As brave as a brave man could be, He lit him his pipe made of corn-cob, And drawing a draught long and free— “The red rascals kept me quite busy With pulling the trigger,” said he. “And though I got slightly the better Of insolent foes in the strife, I may as well own that my triumph Was due unto Maggie, my wife; For had she not loaded expertly, The Mingos had reft us of life. “And through all that terrible combat She never was scared at the din; But carefully loaded each rifle, And prophesied that we would win— Yet why should she tremble? her fathers Were the terrible lords of Loch Linn.” John Lewis commanded the fortress; John Lewis was army as well; John Lewis was master of ordnance; John Lewis he fought as I tell; And, gathered long since to his fathers, John Lewis lies low in the dell. But a braver old man, or a better, Was never yet known to exist; Not even in olden Augusta, Where good men who died were not missed, For the very particular reason— Good men then were plenty, I wist. _THE FIRST BLOOD DRAWN._