Nick o' the Night; or, The Boy Spy of '76

# Catalog Note

Nick o' the Night; or, The Boy Spy of '76 by T. C. Harbaugh, serialized in this April 1884 Beadle and Adams weekly, follows a youthful Revolutionary War partisan operating in South Carolina. The opening chapters depict Nick intercepting a British courier at a ford of the Edisto River, forcing him to surrender dispatches at gunpoint with aid of his dog Whig. Nick delivers the packet to Colonel Isaac Hayne, revealing Lord Rawdon's orders to capture or kill him. The story then shifts to Nick's mission to reach Francis Marion's forces with the dispatches, including a nighttime approach to Azalea plantation, home of loyalist Hugh Latimer and his two daughters—blonde Bertha and dark-eyed Helen. Nick's interior monologue suggests romantic entanglement with Helen despite her father's royal sympathies. The narrative combines espionage adventure with sentimental elements in a patriotic Revolutionary setting.