in a
harvest field and set out to take them; but always having some one in
their company to favor their escape, as they rode up in sight of the
reapers, one of them, duly instructed, waved his hand, which the boys
understood as a signal to make their departure. On that occasion they
pursued Robert Dairs so closely that it is said he jumped his horse
thirty feet down a bank into the river, and dared them to follow him.

And thus the "Black Boys" fled from covert to covert to save their
necks from the blood-thirsty loyalists, who were constantly hunting
them like wild beasts. They would lie concealed for weeks at a time,
and the neighbors would carry them food until they fairly wearied out
their pursuers. The oath by which they bound themselves was an
imprecation of the strongest kind, and the greater part of the
imprecation was literally fulfilled in the sad ends of Hadley and
Ashmore. The latter fled from his country, but he lived a miserable
life, and died as wretchedly as he had lived. Hadley still remained in
the country, and was known for many years to the people of Rocky
River. He was very intemperate, and in his fits of intoxication was
very harsh to his family in driving them from his house in the dead
hours of the night. His neighbors, in order to chastise him for the
abuse of his family, (among whom were some of the "Black Boys"),
dressed themselves in female attire, went to his house by night,
pulled him from his bed, drew his shirt over his head and gave him a
severe whipping. The castigation, it is said, greatly improved the
future treatment of his family. He continued, however, through life,
the same miserable wretch, and died without any friendly hand to
sustain him or eye to pity his deplorable end.

Frequently, when the royalists ranged the country in pursuit of the
"Black Boys," the Whigs would collect in bodies consisting of
twenty-five or thirty men, ready to pounce upon the pursuers, if they
had captured any of the boys. From the allurements held out to the
Boys to give themselves up, they went, at one time, nearly to
Hillsboro to beg the pardon of the Governor, (Tryon), but finding out
it was his intention, if he could get them into his hands, to have
hanged every one of them, they returned, and kept themselves concealed
until patriotic sentiment grew so rapidly from that time (1771) to the
Mecklenburg Declaration, (20th of May, 1775), that concealment was no
longer necessary. When the drama of t