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LORD PERCY'S DREAM

Leaving the dissipations of the English court, Lord Percy came to America
to share the fortunes of his brethren in the contest then raging on our
soil. His father had charged him with the delivery of a certain package
to an Indian woman, should he meet her in his rambles through the western
wilds, and, without inquiring into the nature of the gift
or its occasion, he accepted the trust. At the battle of the
Brandywine--strangely foretold by Quaker prophecy forty years before--he
was detailed by Cornwallis to drive the colonial troops out of a
graveyard where they had intrenched themselves, and though he set upon
this errand with the enthusiasm of youth, his cheek paled as he drew near
the spot where the enemy was waiting.

It was not that he had actual physical fear of the onset: he had dreamed
a dream a few nights before, the purport of which he had hinted to his
comrades, and as he rode into the clearing at the top of Osborn's Hill he
drew rein and exclaimed, "My dream! Yonder is the graveyard. I am fated
to die there." Giving a few of his effects to his brother officers, and
charging one of them to take a message of love to his betrothed in
England, he set his lips and rode forward.

His cavalry bound toward the scene of action and are within thirty paces
of the cemetery wall, when from behind it rises a battalion of men in the
green uniform of the Santee Rangers and pours a withering fire into the
ranks. The shock is too great to withstand, and the red-coats stagger
away with broken ranks, leaving many dead and wounded on the ground. Lord
Percy is the coolest of all. He urges the broken columns forward, and
almost alone holds the place until the infantry, a hundred yards behind,
come up. Thereupon ensues one of those hand-to-hand encounters that are
so rare in recent war, and that are the sorest test of valor and
discipline. Now rides forward Captain Waldemar, chief of the rangers and
a half-breed Indian, who, seeing Percy, recognizes him as an officer and
engages him in combat. There is for a minute a clash of steel on steel;
then the nobleman falls heavily to the earth--dead. His dream has come
true. That night the captain Waldemar seeks out the body of this officer,
attracted by something in the memory of his look, and from his bosom
takes the packet that was committed to his care.

By lantern-light he reads, carelessly at first, then rapidly and eagerly,
and at the close he l