its trees were spared by the British foragers, and the house itself
was no longer in demand as officers' quarters, being too near King's
Bridge for safe American occupancy, but not sufficiently near for
British. Hessians and Tories, though, patrolled the near-by roads, and
sometimes Continental troops camped in the neighboring hills. In 1778,
the American Colonel Gist, whose corps was then at the foot of Boar
Hill, north of the manor-house, was paying his court to the handsome
widow Babcock, in the parsonage, when he was surprised by a force of
yagers, rangers, and Loyalist light horse, and got away in the nick of
time.[2] The parsonage, unlike the manor-house, was often visited by
officers on their way hither and thither, but I will not say it was
for this reason that Miss Sally Williams, the sister of Colonel
Philipse's wife, preferred living in the parsonage with the Babcocks
rather than in the great deserted mansion.

On a dark November afternoon, Williams had sent black Sam to the
orchard for some winter apples, and the slave, after the fashion of
his race, was taking his time over the errand. The shades of evening
gathered while the steward was making his usual rounds within the
mansion. Molly, whose housewifely instincts ever asserted themselves,
had of her own accord made a dusting tour of the rooms and halls. She
was on the first landing of the stairway in the east hall, just about
to finish her task in the waning light admitted by the window over the
landing and by the fanlight over the front door, when, as she applied
her cloth to the mahogany balustrade, the door of the east parlor
opened, and Williams came out of that dark apartment.

"Lord, Molly!" he said, a moment later, having started at suddenly
beholding her. "I thought you were a ghost! It's time to get supper, I
think, from the look of the day outside. I'll have to make a light."

From a closet in the side of the staircase he took a candle, flint,
and tinder, talking the while to Molly, as she rubbed the balusters.
Having produced a tiny candle-flame that did not light up half the
hall, Williams started towards the dining-room, but stopped at a
distant sound of galloping horses, which were evidently coming down
the Albany road. The steward and the maid exchanged conjectures as to
whether this meant a British patrol or "Rebel" dragoons, "Skinners" or
Hessian yagers, Highlanders, or Loyalist light horse; and then
observed from the sound that the h