One of my uncles lent the musket to one of his neighbors for the celebration of the taking of Cornwallis, and it never was brought back.

We would give its weight in gold to get it back.
I will put on record two stories about Colonel Peirce, which have something of a superstitious quality in them.

I have no doubt of their truth, as they come from persons absolutely truthful and not superstitious or credulous themselves.
When Colonel Peirce was seventy years old, he told his wife and my aunt, her granddaughter, from whom I heard the story, who was then a grown-up young woman, that he was going out to the barn and going up to the high beams.

In those days the farmers' barns had the hay in bays on each side, and over the floor in the middle rails were laid across from one side to the other, on which corn-stalks, for bedding the cattle, and other light things were put.

They urged him not to go, and said an old man like him should not take such risks; to which he replied by dancing a hornpipe in the room in their presence, showing something of that exhilaration of spirit which the Scotch called being "fey" and which they regard as a presage of approaching misfortune.