on the 9th reached very advantageous ground. A halt was necessary to refresh the troops, and to give time to the batteaux, loaded with provisions, to come abreast.

When the army was on the point of moving after the halt, I received a message from Lady Harriet, submitting to my decision a proposal, of passing to the camp of the enemy, and requesting General Gates' permission to attend her husband. Lady Harriet expressed an earnest solicitude to execute her intention, if not interfering with my designs.

Though I was ready to believe, for I had experienced that patience and fortitude, in a supreme degree, were to be found, as well as every other virtue, under the most tender forms, I was astonished at the proposal. After so long an agitation of the spirits, exhausted not only for want of rest, but the absolute want of food, drenched in rain for twelve hours together, that a woman should be capable of such an undertaking as delivering herself to the enemy, probably in the night; and uncertain of what hands she might fall into, appeared an effort above human nature. The assistance I was enabled to give was small indeed; I had not even a cup of wine to offer her; but I was told she had found, from some kind and unfortunate hand, a little rum and dirty water. All I could furnish her, was an open boat and a few lines written upon dirty and wet paper to General Gates, recommending her to his protection.

Mr. Brudenell, the chaplain to the artillery, the same gentlemen that had officiated so signally at General Frazer's funeral, readily undertook to accompany her, and with one female servant, and the Major's valet de chambre, who had a ball which he had received in the late action then in his shoulder, she rowed down the river to meet the enemy. But her distresses were not yet at an end. The night was advanced before the boat reached the enemy's out-posts, and the sentinel would not let it pass, nor even come on shore. In vain Mr. Brudenell offered the flag of truce, and represented the state of the extraordinary passenger. The guard, apprehensive of treachery, and punctilious to his orders, threatened to fire into the boat if it stirred before day-light. Her anxiety and suffering were thus protracted through seven or eight dark and cold hours; and her reflections upon that first reception could not give her very encouraging ideas

of the treatment she was afterwards to expect. But it is due to justice at the close of this adventure to say, that she was received and accommodated by General Gates, with all the humanity and respect that her rank, her merits, and her fortunes deserved.

Let such as are affected by these circumstances of alarm, hardship and danger, recollect, that the subject of them was a woman, of the most tender and delicate frame; of the gentlest manners; habituated to all the soft elegances, and refined enjoyments, that attend high birth and fortune; and far advanced in a state in which the tender cares, always due to the sex, becomes indispensably necessary. Her mind alone was formed for such trials.-General Burgoyne's Narrative.

DREADFUL EFFECTS OF BLOOD-MONEY.

THE reward of forty pounds on conviction of felony, though originally intended to promote vigilance in the officers of justice, has been frequently perverted to the most diabolical purposes. Individuals have not only been seduced to commit crimes, in order that the informer might obtain the price of blood, but the criminal records of this country afford many melancholy instances in which innocent men have been convicted on the perjured evidence of conspirators.

Blood-money and its perversions, are not, however, of modern date; they seem to have been well understood as long ago as the reign of Edward the Third, when an appeal of murder was made a source of profit. The preamble of a statute enacted in the reign of that monarch, states, in substance, that it was the acknowledged practice of officers of justice, to compel their prisoners, by cruel treatment, to challenge innocent persons with the perpetration of heavy crimes, with a view to the extortion of ransom money from them, under the dread of punishment; and that the statute was framed for the correction of so enormous an evil.

The following tragic and horrible crime affords a most

impressive lesson on this subject, and exhibits, perhaps, the most dreadful instance upon record, of the facility wit which determined villainy may pervert measures intende to benefit and protect mankind, into bitter and scourging oppression. A few years ago, the green of a rich bleacher in the north of Ireland, had been frequently robbed at night. to a very considerable amount, notwithstanding the utmost vigilance of the proprietor and his servants to protect it; and without the slightest clue being furnished for the detection of the robber.

Effectually and repeatedly baffled by the ingenuity of the thief or thieves, the proprietor at length offered a reward of £100 for the apprehension of any person or persons detected in the act of robbing the green.

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A few days after this proclamation, the master was at midnight roused from his bed by the alarm of a faithful servant, who in the tones of alarm and agitation informed him "there was some person with a lantern now crossing the green." The master started from his bed, flew to the window and found his information correct, it was so in fact; he hurried on his clothes, and armed himself with a loaded pistol, the servant flew for his own loaded musket, and thus prepared they cautiously followed the light. The person with a lantern (a man) was, as they approached on tiptoe," distinctly seen stooping, and earnestly employed feeling about on the ground; he was seen lifting and tumbling the linen; the master's conclusion was, as may be imagined, quickly made; the servant fired, the robber fell. The man and master now proceeded to examine the spot. The robber was shot dead: and he was now, to their astonishment, recognized to be a youth of about nineteen, who resided but a few fields off. The linen was cut across; large bundles of it were tied up, as if in readiness for removal; and upon searching and examining further, the servant, in the presence of his master, picked up a penknife, with the name of the unhappy youth engraved upon the handle. This mass of circumstantial evidence was conclusive, for in the morning the lantern was acknowledged by the afflicted and heart-broken father of the boy, to be his son's lantern. The unhappy man would have asserted his son's innocence, and with a pure conscience,

but defence was dumb, astonishment sealed his lips, the evidence before him overpowered his belief and his parental feelings.

The faithful servant received the hundred pounds reward, and was, besides, promoted to be the confidential overseer of the establishment. The blood curdles in the veins, when we learn the remaining acts of this tragedy. This faithful servant, this confidential overseer, was shortly after proved to have been himself the thief! and was hanged at Dundalk for the murder of the youth he had so cruelly betrayed.

It appeared, upon the clearest evidence, and by the dying confession and description of the wretch himself, that all the overpowering mass of circumstantial evidence we have related, was preconcerted by him, not only to screen himself from the imputation of former robberies, but to obtain the proffered reward of one hundred pounds. The unhappy dupe, the innocent victim he chose for this diabolical sacrifice, was an industrious lad of the neigborhood, on whom an aged father wholly depended for support: he was artless, affectionate, and obliging. The boy had a favorite knife, a penknife, which had his name engraved upon its handle, the keepsake of some loving friend. The first act of this fiend was, to coax him to transfer to him that knife as a pledge of their friendship, and this, as may be imagined, was not easy to effect, but it was done. On the evening of the fatal day, the miscreant prepared the bleaching green, the theatre of this melancholy murder, for his dreadful performance. He tore the linen from the pegs in some places, and cut it across in others; he turned it up in heaps, and tied it up in the large bundles in which it was found, as if ready to be moved, and placed the favorite knife, the keepsake, in one of the cuts he had himself made.

Matters being thus prepared, he invited the devoted youth to supper, and as the nights were dark, he recommended him to provide himself with a lantern to light him home. At supper, or shortly after, he artfully turned the conversation on the favorite knife, which he affected with great concern, to have lately missed, and pretended that the last recollection he had of it, was his using it on a particular spot of the bleaching green, described that spot to

the obliging and unsuspecting youth, and begged him to see if it was there. The lantern he had been desired to bring with him to light him home, was prepared, and he proceeded with the alacrity of good nature on his fatal errand. As soon as the monster saw his victin completely in the snare, he gave the alarm to his master, and the melancholy and horrible crime described was committed, under the approving eye and hand of the deceived master himself.

Could there have been possibly a stronger case of circumstantial evidence than this? The young man seemed actually caught in the act. The knife with his name on it was found upon the spot; the linen cut and tied up in bundles for removal; the lantern acknowledged by his father to be his own; the night chosen for its darkness; the midnight; the master himself present, a man of the fairest character; the unsuspected servant, a faithful creature of unblemished reputation!!

PROPHECY THE CAUSE OF ITS OWN COMPLETION.

AN English gentleman residing at Berlin, gives the following account of the execution of a man who was told that he should be hanged. "I went a few days since," says he, "to see a man executed for the murder of a child." His motives for this horrid deed were much more extraordinary than the action itself. He had accompanied some of his companions to the house of a fellow, who assumed the character of a fortune-teller, and having disobliged him, by expressing a contempt of his art, the fellow, out of revenge, prophesied that this man should die on the scaffold. This seemed to make little impression at the time, but afterwards recurred often to this unhappy creature's memory, and became every day more troublesome to his imagination. At length the idea haunted his mind so incessantly, that he was rendered perfectly miserable, and could no longer endure life. He would have put himself to death with his own hands, but he had been deterred by the notion, that God Almighty never forgave suicide; though upon repent