e close of the war, a couple of young
American officers went to the convent, and, contrary to all precedent,
were admitted. They remained within all that day, and no one saw them
leave, but a sound of wheels passed through the street that evening. Next
day there were no signs of life about the place, nor the day following,
nor the next. The savage dog was quiet and the garden walks had gone
unswept. Some neighbors climbed over the wall and reported that the place
had been deserted. Why and by whom no one ever knew, but a cloud remained
upon its title until a recent day, for it was thought that at some time
the nuns might return.

THE SKULL IN THE WALL

A skull is built into the wall above the door of the court-house at
Goshen, New York. It was taken from a coffin unearthed in 1842, when the
foundation of the building was laid. People said there was no doubt about
it, only Claudius Smith could have worn that skull, and he deserved to be
publicly pilloried in that manner. Before the Revolutionary war Smith was
a farmer in Monroe, New York, and being prosperous enough to feel the
king's taxes no burden, to say nothing of his jealousy of the advantage
that an independent government would be to the hopes of his poorer
neighbors, he declared for the king. After the declaration of
independence had been published, his sympathies were illustrated in an
unpleasantly practical manner by gathering a troop of other Tories about
him, and, emboldened by the absence of most of the men of his vicinage in
the colonial army, he began to harass the country as grievously in foray
as the red-coats were doing in open field.

He pillaged houses and barns, then burned them; he insulted women, he
drove away cattle and horses, he killed several persons who had
undertaken to defend their property. His "campaigns" were managed with
such secrecy that nobody knew when or whence to look for him. His murder
of Major Nathaniel Strong, of Blooming Grove, roused indignation to such
a point that a united effort was made to catch him, a money reward for
success acting as a stimulus to the vigilance of the hunters, and at last
he was captured on Long Island. He was sent back to Goshen, tried,
convicted, and on January 22, 1779, was hanged, with five of his band.
The bodies of the culprits were buried in the jail-yard, on the spot
where the court-house stands, and old residents identified Smith's
skeleton, when it was accidentally exhumed, by its unco