fed on their faces with hungry eyes. They prattled on,
never dreaming that their father was but a few feet from them. Smith
survived the war and lived to be on good terms with his old foes.

In Lenox lived a Tory, one of those respectable buffers to whom wealth
and family had given immunity in the early years of the war, but who
sorely tried the temper of his neighbors by damning everything American
from Washington downward. At last they could endure his abuse no longer;
his example had affected other Anglomaniacs, and a committee waited on
him to tell him that he could either swear allegiance to the colonies or
be hanged. He said he would be hanged if he would swear, or words to that
effect, and hanged he was, on a ready-made gallows in the street. He was
let down shortly, "brought around" with rum, and the oath was offered
again. He refused it. This had not been looked for. It had been taken for
granted that he would abjure his fealty to the king at the first
tightening of the cord. A conference was held, and it was declared that
retreat would be undignified and unsafe, so the Tory was swung up again,
this time with a yank that seemed to "mean business." He hung for some
time, and when lowered gave no sign of life. There was some show of alarm
at this, for nobody wanted to kill the old fellow, and every effort was
made to restore consciousness. At last the lungs heaved, the purple faded
from his cheek, his eyes opened, and he gasped, "I'll swear." With a
shout of joy the company hurried him to the tavern, seated him before the
fire, and put a glass of punch in his hand. He drank the punch to
Washington's health, and after a time was heard to remark to himself,
"It's a hard way to make Whigs, but it'll do it."

Nathan Jackson, of Tyringham, was another Yankee who had seen fit to take
arms against his countrymen, and when captured he was charged with
treason and remanded for trial. The jail, in Great Barrington, was so
little used in those days of sturdy virtue that it had become a mere
shed, fit to hold nobody, and Jackson, after being locked into it, might
have walked out whenever he felt disposed; but escape, he thought, would
have been a confession of the wrongness of Tory principles, or of a fear
to stand trial. He found life so monotonous, however, that he asked the
sheriff to let him go out to work during the day, promising to sleep in
his cell, and such was his reputation for honesty that his request was
grante