e. She couldn't help going
back to her first love, the old "Knickerbocker History" that seemed so
real to her, even now.

The hand of improvement touched Cockloft Hall shortly after. The old
summer-house was taken down; the famous cherry-tree, where the robins
sang and reared their young for so many generations, succumbed to old
age and wintry blasts; but she was glad she had seen it in its romantic
halo.

They were not far from the upper railroad station then,--the old Morris
and Essex that had stirred up the country people mightily when it first
went thundering through quiet vales, and screaming out at little
way-stations. They were just in time for a train. The sun had dropped
down behind the Orange Mountain, though the whole west was alive with
changeful gold and scarlet, melting to fainter tints, changing to
indescribable hues and visionary islands floating in seas of amber and
chrysoprase.

Hanny was quite tired, and leaned her head on Joe's shoulder. Ben and
Delia were in front, and Mr. Whitney in the seat behind. They kept up an
animated conversation, and thought it had been a delightful afternoon.

"And I feel like quoting a bit out of a letter of the Poet Gray," said
Ben. "'Do you not think a man may be the wiser, I had almost said
better, for going a hundred or two miles?' We have gone a tenth or so of
that, and I feel ever so much richer as well as wiser. How is it with
you, little Hanny?"

"I've been to the land of heroes," she replied, with a soft smile. "I
shall insist that Jim must honour New Jersey in the future."

"Bravo!" said Mr. Whitney. "And there are many more heroes in it, and I
think some heroines, that we must hunt up at a leisure day. There was
Ann Halsted of Elizabethtown, who saw the British foraging expedition
coming over from Staten Island, where the ship lay at anchor; and,
donning a suit of her father's clothes, and taking an old musket, she
went down to the only road they could come up, and blazed away at them
with such intrepidity that the red-coats were alarmed lest a whole squad
might be quartered there, and retreated in haste. It was said when
Washington heard of it, he toasted the young lady. And there were the
brave women of Valley Forge."

"And Moll Pitcher, don't forget her," put in Ben. "We in New York don't
own quite everything."

They went rumbling into the tunnel, and Hanny started. She was used to
the Harlem tunnel; but this came upon her unexpectedly.

"And the