Under Fire: A Tale of the Shenandoah Valley — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“ 76 “LOYAL MOSE.” cry aloud for vengeance. I have no more to say; do your work, traitor and coward that you are.”’ An oath, round and deep, fell from the lips of Col- onel Ezra ‘T'rafton. “We have had quite enough of this Yankee’s 1m- pudence,’’ he cried. ‘‘String him up, boys, and then we will be on the move.”’ The noosed rope was hung over the Union cap- tain’s head. ‘‘Remember, this will only add te your punishment hereafter,’’ uttered the doomed man, as he felt the hangman’s noose tighten under his ear. CHAPTER XIV. SATO) IA Se WE OS Colonel Trafton had not made a confidant of his victim, else the young Union captain would have better understood why the Confederate colonel wished to dispose of him. The reader, of course, knows there was a woman in the case. That woman was Bertha McVane. The colonel understood well enough that the out- tage he was about to perpetrate was entirely without EXCUse. That it was not in his country’s cause, but to minister to his own private ends that he was about to put the gallant officer to a terrible death. Even were the charge true that Chetwood was a spy, the regulations of the service required that he should at least have the benefit of a military trial. To hang him without that formality was assuming a responsibility no man in his cool senses would have dared. Not even Mosby himself, who was generally cred- = (E(0) ~comilebooks