But poor Peter Yarnall's case seems still more deplorable.
This hard fated man, a simple, inoffensive quaker, lived near Camden.
Having urgent business with a man, who, as he understood,
was with general Sumter, on the opposite side of the Catawba,
he went over to him. The man happened, at that moment, to be keeping guard
over some tory prisoners. A paper which Yarnall wanted to see was, it seems,
in a jacket pocket in the man's tent hard by. "Hold my piece a moment, sir,"
said he to Yarnall, "and I'll bring the paper." Yarnall, though averse,
as a quaker, from all killing of enemies with a gun, yet saw no objection
to holding one a moment. The next day, a day for ever black
in the American calendar, witnessed the surprisal of general Sumter
and the release of the tory prisoners, one of whom immediately went his way
and told colonel Tarleton that he had seen Peter Yarnall, the day before,
keeping guard over the king's friends, prisoners to the rebels.
The poor man's house was quickly surrounded by the British cavalry.
Vain were all his own explanations, his wife's entreaties,
or his children's cries. He was dragged to Camden, and thrust into prison.
Every morning, his wife and daughter, a girl of about fifteen,
rode into town in an old chair, to see him and to bring him milk and fruits,
which must have been highly acceptable to one crammed, in the dogdays,
into a small prison, with one hundred and sixty-three half-stifled wretches.
On the fourth day, an amiable young lady, Miss Charlton,
living near the prison, had heard of poor Yarnall's fate that morning.
Soon therefore as she saw Mrs. Yarnall and her daughter coming along as usual,
with their little present to their husband and father, she burst into tears.
Mrs. Yarnall alighted at the door of the jail, and begged to see her husband.
"Follow me," said one of the guard, "and I'll show you your husband."
As she turned the corner, "There he is, madam," said the soldier,
pointing to her husband as he hung dead on a beam from the window.
The daughter sunk to the ground; but her mother, as if petrified at the sight,
stood silent and motionless, gazing on her dead husband
with that wild keen eye of unutterable woe, which pierces all hearts.
Presently, as if braced up with despair, she seemed quite recovered,
and calmly begged one of the soldiers to assist her to take down the corpse
and lay it in the bottom of the chair. Then taking her seat,
with her daughter sobbing by her side, and her husband dead at her feet,
she drove home apparently quite unmoved; and during the whole time
she was preparing his coffin and performing the funeral duties,
she preserved the same firm unaltered looks. But soon as the grave
had shut its mouth on her husband, and divorced him for ever from her sight,
the remembrance of the past rushed upon her thoughts with a weight too heavy
for her feeble nature to bear. Then clasping her hands in agony,