hed altogether in the flames.

"A general scene of devastation was now spread through all the
townships. Fire, sword, and the other different instruments of
destruction, alternately triumphed. The settlements of the tories
alone generally escaped, and appeared as islands in the midst of the
surrounding ruin. The merciless ravagers, having destroyed the main
objects of their cruelty, directed their animosity to every part of
living nature belonging to them--shooting and destroying some of their
cattle, and cutting out the tongues of others, leaving them still alive
to prolong their agonies.

"The following are a few of the more singular circumstances of the
barbarity practised in the attack upon Wyoming. Captain Bedlock, who had
been taken prisoner, being stripped naked, had his body stuck full of
splinters of pine-knots, and then a heap of the same piled around him;
the whole was then set on fire, and his two companions, Captains Ranson
and Durgee, thrown alive into the flames and held down with pitchforks.
The returned tories, who had at different times abandoned the
settlement in order to join in those savage expeditions, were the most
distinguished for their cruelty: in this they resembled the tories that
joined the British forces. One of these Wyoming tories, whose mother had
married a second husband, butchered with his own hands both her, his
father-in-law, his own sisters, and their infant children. Another, who
during his absence had sent home several threats against the life of his
father, now not only realized them in person, but was himself, with his
own hands, the exterminator of his whole family, mothers, brothers, and
sisters, and mingled their blood in one common carnage with that of
the aged husband and father. The broken parts and scattered relics of
families, consisting mostly of women and children who had escaped to the
woods during the different scenes of this devastation, suffered little
less than their friends, who had perished in the ruins of their houses.
Dispersed, and wandering in the forests as chance and fear directed,
without provision or covering, they had a long tract of country to
traverse, and many, without doubt, perished in the woods."

"Such deeds make the blood curdle in my veins," observed Mrs. Harmar.

"It is said that the cruelty of Colonel John Butler at Wyoming has been
greatly exaggerated," remarked Mr. Jackson Harmar. "His son, Walter
Butler, was certainly a savage, and the