Everybody has heard the mournful story of colonel Lee's little bugler,
and how he was murdered by colonel Tarleton. This "poor beardless boy",
as Lee, in his pathetic account of that horrid transaction, calls him,
had been mounted on a very fleet horse; but to gratify a countryman
who had brought some news of the British, and was afraid of falling
into their hands, Lee ordered the boy to exchange his horse, a moment,
for that of the countryman, which happened to be a miserable brute.
This Lee did in his simplicity, not even dreaming that any thing
in the shape of civilized man could think of harming such a child.
Scarcely had Lee left him, when he was overtaken by Tarleton's troopers,
who dashed up to him with looks of death, brandishing their swords
over his head. In vain his tender cheeks, reminding them of their own
youthful brothers, sought to touch their pity; in vain, with feeble voice,
and as long as he was able, he continued to cry for quarter.
They struck their cruel swords into his face and arms,
which they gashed with so many mortal wounds that he died the next day.
"Is your name Wiley?" said one of Tarleton's captains, whose name was TUCK,
to Mr. John Wiley, sheriff of Camden, who had lately whipped and cropped
a noted horse thief, named Smart. "Is your name Wiley?" said captain Tuck
to the young man, at whose door he rode up and asked the question. --
"Yes, sir," replied Mr. Wiley. "Well, then, sir, you are a d--n-d rascal,"
rejoined captain Tuck, giving him at the same time a cruel blow
over the forehead with his broadsword. Young Wiley, though doomed to die,
being not yet slain, raised his naked arm to screen the blow.
This, though no more than a common instinct in poor human nature
in the moment of terror, served but to redouble the fury of captain Tuck,
who continued his blows at the bleeding, staggering youth,
until death kindly placed him beyond the reach of human malice.
All this was done within a few hundred paces of lord Cornwallis,
who never punished captain Tuck.