rt distance in the rear, carried a small negro youth and two large
portmanteaus. The three riders made a group that was, as far as could
be seen from their view-point, alone on the highway.

There were reasons why such a group, on that road at that time, was an
unusual sight,--reasons familiar to any one who is well informed in
the history of the Revolution. Unfortunately, most good Americans are
better acquainted with the French Revolution than with our own, know
more about the state of affairs in Rome during the reign of Nero than
about the condition of things in New York City during the British
occupation, and compensate for their knowledge of Scotch-English
border warfare in remote times by their ignorance of the border
warfare that ravaged the vicinity of the island of Manhattan, for six
years, little more than a century ago.

Our Revolutionary War had reached the respectable age of three and a
half years. Lexington, Bunker Hill, Brooklyn, Harlem Heights, White
Plains, Trenton, Princeton, the Brandywine, German-town, Bennington,
Saratoga, and Monmouth--not to mention events in the South and in
Canada and on the water--had taken their place in history. The army of
the King of England had successively occupied Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia; had been driven out of Boston by siege, and had left
Philadelphia to return to the town more pivotal and nearer the
sea,--New York. One British commander-in-chief had been recalled by
the British ministry to explain why he had not crushed the rebellion,
and one British major-general had surrendered an army, and was now
back in England defending his course and pleading in Parliament the
cause of the Americans, to whom he was still a prisoner on parole. Our
Continental army--called Continental because, like the general
Congress, it served the whole union of British-settled Colonies or
States on this continent, and was thus distinguished from the militia,
which served in each case its particular Colony or State only--had
experienced both defeats and victories in encounters with the King's
troops and his allies, German, Hessian, and American Tory. It had
endured the winter at Valley Forge while the British had fed, drunk,
gambled, danced, flirted, and wenched in Philadelphia. The French
alliance had been sanctioned. Steuben, Lafayette, DeKalb, Pulaski,
Kosciusko, Armand, and other Europeans, had taken service with us. One
plot had been made in Congress and the army to supplant W