ed.

Torture was, therefore, at once employed to discover the hidden
treasures. After all had been given, if the sum seemed too little, the
proprietors were brutally punished for their poverty or their supposed
dissimulation. A gentlewoman, named Fabry, with her aged mother and
other females of the family, had taken refuge in the cellar of her
mansion. As the day was drawing to a close, a band of plunderers
entered, who, after ransacking the house, descended to the cellarage.
Finding the door barred, they forced it open with gunpowder. The
mother, who was nearest the entrance, fell dead on the threshold.
Stepping across her mangled body, the brigands sprang upon her
daughter, loudly demanding the property which they believed to be
concealed. They likewise insisted on being informed where the master
of the house had taken refuge. Protestations of ignorance as to hidden
treasure, or the whereabouts of her husband, who, for aught she knew,
was lying dead in the streets, were of no avail. To make her more
communicative, they hanged her on a beam in the cellar, and after a
few moments cut her down before life was extinct. Still receiving no
satisfactory reply, where a satisfactory reply was impossible, they
hanged her again. Again, after another brief interval, they gave her a
second release, and a fresh interrogatory. This barbarity they
repeated several times, till they were satisfied that there was
nothing to be gained by it, while, on the other hand, they were losing
much valuable time. Hoping to be more successful elsewhere, they left
her hanging for the last time, and trooped off to fresher fields.
Strange to relate, the person thus horribly tortured survived. A
servant in her family, married to a Spanish soldier, providentially
entered the house in time to rescue her perishing mistress. She was
restored to existence, but never to reason. Her brain was hopelessly
crazed, and she passed the remainder of her life wandering about her
house, or feebly digging in her garden for the buried treasure which
she had been thus fiercely solicited to reveal.

A wedding-feast was rudely interrupted. Two young persons, neighbors
of opulent families, had been long betrothed, and the marriage-day had
been fixt for Sunday, the fatal 4th of November. The guests were
assembled, the ceremony concluded, and the nuptial banquet in
progress, when the horrible outcries in the streets proclaimed that
the Spaniards had broken loose. Hour after