Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1862-11-06

Seth Rogers put down his scythe, took off
his straw hat and wiped his forehead with his
blue and white cotton handkerchief 1t was
a warm day, although it was wearing toward
the middle of October, and the farmer had
been hard at work for the last three hours,
moving on a strip of salt hay in some low
meadow land about a quarter of mile east
of the small red house where old General
Woolcoot's widder," as the neighbors used
to call her, resided. He had a coarse, hard
phySiognomy, large, stalwart, rugged frame,
beetling eyebrows, with dark gloomy look
ing grey eyes, and his iron-grey locks hung
over his forehead, brown and wrinkled with
labor, for Seth Rogers had not yet passed
the prime of his manhood. He was stern
lonely man, and his neighbors said his heart
was as hard as his face. All his near relatives
were dead, and there was no heart of man or
of woman, or child in the world which beat
with one throb of love or pity for Seth
Rogers. He was a widower and childless,
for he had laid his wife in her youth, in
the village graveyard, and he lived in the
great brown house by the creek, with only
his hired man and his old housekeeper-am man
whose creed and whose gospel was worldly
gain-whose only ambition was to add to his
broad lands, man without fear of God or love
to humanity Yet the old neighbors shook
their heads and said it was not always So
that Seth Rogers was a pleasant little boy,
and that he had praying mother and one lit
tie sister with the face of an angel. They
could still remember the clusters of her shin
ing curls that waved In the winds like the
golden rod in September, and her eyes deep
and blue as the skies in which midnight stars
are set. There were few old women in
-bO al,
quent when they spoke of the wondrous beauty
of the sweet child, Mary Rogers, and they
said her brother, who was four years her SEN
ior, had cared for her with tenderness, and
watched over her with pride and love which
were like those of mother over her first
born But Mary's beauty had never blossom
ed in womanhood. One time, a score and a
half years ago, company OF Indians had
made descent on the village of West Farms,
seated at the foot of the hills. Trembling wo-
men had clustered together with hushed
breaths and haggard faces in the cottages, and
at last company of the bravest men had
gathered together, shouldered their arms and
gone out, in the name of the God of battles,
to fight for their wives, their children, and
their homes. Jedediah WoOcott led his little
company of brave men, and earned thereby
the title of general. They soon succeeded in
routing the Indians, who had stationed them
selves at the northern part of the village, and
the white men lost but two of their number.
But that night Mary Rogers took her death
cold; for the Child, hearing the war cry Of
the Indians, which startled her from her
slumbers, had sprung suddenly out of bed,
rushed out doors in her night dress, and re-
manned for nearly an hour crouched down on
the damp grass, under the apple tree, con-
yulsed with terror. In less than six months
afterwards Marys beauty lay under the sum
mer grass, and her broken-hearted mother
followed her a little later. So with all his
money, the neighbors affirmed that Seth Rog-
ers has had hard time of it, for it was a
terrible thing to have ones kith and kin cut
off from them.
Cono,udol 20 r,o~ro,-