PROVIDENCE. 4.4:]

fiom the window of a good-looking house, surrounded
with a farm-yard and garden. They knocked at the
door, and, in a supplicating tone, made known their
distress, and begged relief. They were admitted, and
treated with compassion and hospitality. In the house
were the mistress, her children, and women-servants,
an old man, and a boy: the master was abroad. The
sailors, sitting round the kitchen fire, whispered to
each other, that here was an opportunity of making a
booty, that would amply compensate for the loss of
clothes and wages. They settled their plan, and on
the old man’s coming with logs to the fire, one of them
broke his skull with the poker, and laid him dead.
Another took up a knife, which had been brought with
the loaf and cheese, and running after the boy, who
was making lus escape out of the house, stabbed him
to the heart. The rest locked the doors, and after
tying all the women and children, began to ransack
the house. One of the children, continuing to make
loud exclamations, a fellow went and strangled it.
They had nearly finished packing up such of the most
valuable things as they could carry off, when the master
of the house came home. Ile was a smugeler as well
as a farmer, and had just returned from an ‘expedition,
leaving his companions, with their goods, at a neigh-
bourine public-house. Surprised at “finding the doors
locked, and at secing hehts moving about in the
chambers, he suspected somewhat amiss; and, upon
listening, ‘he heard strange voices, and saw ‘some of the
sailors through the windows. Ie hastened back to
his companions, and brought them with him just as
the robbers opened the door, and were coming out
with their pillage, having first sct fire to the house, in
order to conceal what they had done. The smuggler
and his friends let fly their blunderbusses in_ the
midst of them, and then rushing forwards, seized the
survivors and secured them. Pereeiving flames in the
house, they ran and extinguished them, The villains