d the house to
the last jug."

"Then bestir yourself, for I am in no mood to tarry."

In a brief lapse of time an abundant board was spread, and the leaders
of the corps, consisting of some twenty or thirty officers of all ranks,
were gathered around it. A scene of uproar succeeded that resounded to
the roof with the unfeeling and licentious mirth of those engaged in the
carouse.

When they had eaten and drunk their fill, the greater portion of the
guests were assembled at the front door. From this position there was
to be seen, at no great distance, a small inclosure of not above ten
feet square, constructed with a dark paling, above which a venerable
willow drooped its branches. Towards this inclosure some five or six of
the revellers repaired, to gratify an idle and, at present, a maudlin
curiosity. When they arrived here, they leaned across the paling to read
the inscription upon a stone that seemed but recently to have been
placed there. It was a simple memorial of the death of Colonel Markham,
of the Carolina militia, which was recorded to have taken place but
eighteen months before on the Savannah river in an engagement with the
troops under General Prevost. To this was added, in the spirit of the
times and in accordance with the sentiments of the Whig leaders in the
war of independence, a bitter expression of censure upon the barbarous
disposition of the enemy, couched in homely but earnest phrase, and
speaking the hate of the survivors in the same sentence that commended
the virtues of the dead.

It was an unpropitious moment for such a tablet to meet the eye of those
who gazed upon it; and when it was read aloud by the captain of a troop,
whose natural temper, rendered savage by the rudeness of the war, was
also at this moment exasperated almost to intoxication by the freedom of
the table, he vented his curses in loud and coarse rage against the
memory of him to whom the stone was dedicated. This fire of passion
spread through the group around the tomb, and each man responded to the
first execration by others still deeper and more fierce. Proclaiming the
inscription to be an insult, they made an attack upon the paling, which
was instantly demolished, and, seizing upon the largest stones at hand,
they assailed the tablet with such effect as soon to break it in pieces;
and then, with a useless malice, applied themselves to obliterating the
inscription upon the fragments. Whilst engrossed with the perpetratio