y would sometime absorb everything,
and that here was to stand a beautiful bridge, the pride of the city.
But the old dam was one dark night assaulted by a "piratical craft,"
that demanded entrance, and, on being refused a right through the
waterway, demolished the old affair; and the freed and happy river went
on to the sea unvexed, and still kept Manhattan an island, to be bridged
over as convenience required.

Down in one of the pretty valleys was the home of Cousin Jennie, that
Hanny always connected with Mrs. Clemm and the poet. All about were
green fields and orchards, hills and valleys. Between them and the
Harlem lay a high wooded ridge from whose top you could see the Hudson,
and the Harlem was like a cord winding in and out of green valleys.
There was Fort George and Harlem plains; and Hanny recalled the two old
Underhill ladies whose lives had reached back to Revolutionary times.

They rambled about the historic ground, peaceful enough then. There was
the old Poole house, the De Voe house, and further up the Morris
mansion. What names they recalled!--Washington, Rochambeau, the Hessian
General Knyphausen.

And then Cousin Jennie's husband pointed out a place with a romantic
story. When the Hessian Army had swept on in the steps of General
Washington's retreating men, they had been encamped for some time,
foraging about for food and demanding supplies of the farmers,--an
ill-fed, and ill-clothed set of conscripts, without much enthusiasm,
many of them torn from home and friends, neither knowing nor caring
about the land where they had gone to fight, and perhaps lay their
bones.

Among them a young fellow, Anthony Woolf by name, whose mother, in a
district in distant Germany, had yielded to the blandishments of a
second husband, thus rendering her son liable to conscription, as he was
no longer her sole protector. Young Anthony knew his stepfather grudged
him the broad acres of his patrimony, and guessed whose influence had
sent the press-gang one night, and hurried him off, without even a
good-bye to his mother, to the nearest seaport town, and there embarked
him for a perilous ocean-journey, to fight against people struggling for
their liberty.

He had fought, like many of the others, under a sort of rebellious
protest. Several had deserted: some joining the American army from
sympathy. But Anthony was sick of carnage and marching and
semi-starvation. Winter was coming on. So, one night, he stole out
u