Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 23

# "Nick o' the Night; The Boy Spy of '76" by T. C. Harbaugh

This Beadle and Adams dime novel installment features a Revolutionary War adventure set in April 1781 South Carolina. Nick o' the Night, a young partisan rider accompanied by his horse and dog Whig, ambushes British courier Jotham Nettleton at the Edisto ford and seizes dispatches bearing Lord Rawdon's order to capture or kill him. Nick delivers the intercepted messages to Colonel Isaac Hayne, a patriotic loyalist on parole who shares Nick's commitment to American independence. Hayne warns the boy that Rawdon has now outlawed him. Nick subsequently rides toward Francis Marion's camp in the canebrakes, passing Azalea plantation, home to Hugh Latimer, a stern British sympathizer with two daughters—the dark-eyed Bertha and fair-haired Helen. Nick retrieves a concealed paper from a tree near the estate, suggesting prior secret communication with someone within the household.