The Newtown bee., 1896-11-27

lOOSJ anu Cilt SuuLleIS bAA DtGi NluHtb' 2 and everything was quiet and dark about every house along the creek, a light might have been seen gleaming from the upper window of the Widow Morrow's house. It was Esck digging away at his books, with the school teachers desk in view.
 But Escks opportunity came sooner than he expected. One day younger brother came running home, pale and trembling, and whispered that in coming through the wood the sight of two strange men had caused him to hide be- hind a log, where he had overheard a conversation about 8 raid which was to be made that night upon the cattle of the river valley. Tie raiders would 1 cross the hill by the road which led past Esek's home, about midnight that nlght. Not knowing whether to believe it as a fact, or to regard it as the product of an overwrought imagination, Esek lay out that night under protecting vine covered stone wall until his own senses confirmed, alas too truly, the report of his brother; though at first he scarcely heard the mutlled foot beats of the raid
 ing party AS they stole in single file up the creek road. But peeping through the interlacing branches his eyes saw them, and recognized as their leader the most ferocious and adventurous of all their Tory neighbors.
 But what was he to do? The whole neighborhood was asleep. There was no time for rallying opposition, even if his neighbors, poorly armed and unprepared as they were, would dare to resist such a force as this. Hacking his brain for some means of saving the property of the farmers in the rich river bottom, at least an idea came to him. He called his grandmother, held a hasty whispered consultation with her and his brother, and then buckliEg on pair of old horse pistols which had been his fathers, crept stealthily through the woods, over the steep hillside, in another direction. Meanwhile his brother Ben, half asleep and grumbling at being aroused at that untimely hour, was working away with his grandmother in the cellar. By the light of pine torch shaded so that no gleam could escape through a creVice in the front walls, they bent over the pota, to bin, nervously slicing into halves and quarters, and piling up into baskets and sugar rroughs, the pieces of Esek's small potatoes.
 The work was slow and tedious, and the hours sped by quickly. Soon the raiders might be expected to return. If they succeeded in passing that point and crossing over the brow of the bill, nothing could prevent them from a rapid retreat down into the adjoining valley, which was noted as hoGbed of Toryism. Grandmother kept Ben's fingers flying to their utmost capacity, while her own knife cut and slashed the potatoes with almost frenzied vehemance. But still there were more empty troughs and splint baskets staring at her.
 Finally, as though desperate over the slow progress of the work, she slipped away for moment, after an injunction to Ben not to let his fingers rest a second. She soon came back from the attic with an old but brightly kept sword, keep sake of her departed husband.
 Stopping to listen moment, she elambered into the potato bin and began plying the sword vigorously, slashing in- to heap and cutting a dozen pototoes at a sGroke. Ben ceased from his work and stared in astonishment, until flash of her eye and 2 shake of her head adnonish- ed him there was no time to lose.
 Presently something seemed to startle her. She hssened and laid down the sword. Motloning to Ben, they each