rode up to tell him Cadwalader couldn't git across
the river, an' I heard him say 'I am determined to cross the river and
attack Trenton in the morning.' I tell ye thar was no fellers who
heard him but would hev follered him on their knees, bein' they
couldn't hev used their feet."

"The British thought the war ended before they lost Trenton, I hear,"
said Mrs. Allison, her eyes shining, for one of her ancestors had
ridden with Nathaniel Bacon, the Virginian rebel, when there was
British tyranny in the Old Dominion.

"No doubt of it; why, all of us in the army reckoned how the war
couldn't last much longer. We hadn't rations nor clothes; the men were
goin' home when their time was up an' wouldn't enlist again. We heard
that Cornwallis was goin' home to tell the king how he'd licked us,
an' old Howe was gamblin' an' guzzlin' in New York, spendin' his prize
money like water. Oh, they thought they had us licked for sure!
Long's Washington lives they can't lick us nohow, though they've got
over thirty thousand men an' plenty o' money, an' we with neither. But
the soldiers are 'lowin' as how France will help us. Benjamin Franklin
is over there an' they say he has a way o' gittin' what he goes
after."

"I believe it was Doctor Franklin's 'Poor Richard' who said, 'God
helps those who help themselves.' We've got to rely on ourselves,"
Mrs. Allison said, as if speaking to herself, but all the while
looking at Rodney.

He did not notice this, for he sat gazing into the fire, saying
little, though no word of Angus escaped him. Finally, looking up and
addressing his mother, he said, "Wasn't it Mr. Mason who said he did
not wish to survive the liberties of his country?"

"I think so," she replied, adding, "but we say things in time of
excitement which are pretty hard to live up to," and turned away.

Rodney had secured quite profitable employment that winter. His
mother's health had improved, and the lad could hear the clatter of
her loom through the open window one warm morning in early March when
a passing horseman brought the news that "Dan Morgan was having hard
work to raise a body of riflemen." He had been appointed a colonel the
previous fall, and, as soon as he was released from his parole, began
to enlist men to go to the assistance of Washington at Morristown.

The man talked loudly, and the noise of the loom ceased while Mrs.
Allison listened. After supper that evening she said, "I hear that
Colonel Morgan, of w