,
And the well-worn jest is crowned by the hearers' hearty laughter--
When the cat is purring there, and the dog beside her dozing,
And within his easy-chair sits the grandsire old, reposing,--
Then they tell the story true to the children, hushed and eager,
How the two Van Valens slew, on a time, the Tory leaguer,
Jack, the Regular.

Near a hundred years ago, when the maddest of the Georges
Sent his troops to scatter woe on our hills and in our gorges,
Less we hated, less we feared, those he sent here to invade us
Than the neighbors with us reared who opposed us or betrayed us;
And amid those loyal knaves who rejoiced in our disasters,
As became the willing slaves of the worst of royal masters,
Stood John Berry, and he said that a regular commission
Set him at his comrades' head; so we called him, in derision,
"Jack, the Regular."

When he heard it--"Let them fling! Let the traitors make them merry
With the fact my gracious king deigns to make me Captain Berry.
I will scourge them for the sneer, for the venom that they carry;
I will shake their hearts with fear as the land around I harry:
They shall find the midnight raid waking them from fitful slumbers;
They shall find the ball and blade daily thinning out their numbers:
Barn in ashes, cattle slain, hearth on which there glows no ember,
Neatless plough and horseless wain; thus the rebels shall remember
Jack, the Regular!"

Well he kept his promise then with a fierce, relentless daring,
Fire to rooftrees, death to men, through the Bergen valleys bearing:
In the midnight deep and dark came his vengeance darker, deeper--
At the watch-dog's sudden bark woke in terror every sleeper;
Till at length the farmers brown, wasting time no more on tillage,
Swore those ruffians of the Crown, fiends of murder, fire and pillage,
Should be chased by every path to the dens where they had banded,
And no prayers should soften wrath when they caught the bloody-handed
Jack, the Regular.

One by one they slew his men: still the chief their chase evaded.
He had vanished from their ken, by the Fiend or Fortune aided--
Either fled to Powles Hoek, where the Briton yet commanded,
Or his stamping-ground forsook, waiting till the hunt disbanded;
So they checked pursuit at length, and returned to toil securely:
It was us