fensive movement
against Knyphausen, designing to cross the creek, crush him and capture
his baggage before Howe could counter-march and come to his relief.
Sullivan says he received orders to cross and attack the enemy's left,
while the rest of the army crossed below (at Chad's) and engaged his
right. "This I was preparing to do when Major Spear, a militia officer,
rode hastily in. He informed me that he was from the upper country, that
he had come in the road where the enemy must have passed to attack our
right, and that there was not the least appearance of them in that
quarter." He added that he had been sent to reconnoitre by General
Washington. Sullivan now hesitated: he could not omit to forward such
intelligence. It contradicted certainly what Colonel Bland and Colonel
Ross had sent, but it was possible that Cornwallis had moved northward
only as a feint, and had returned to the support of Knyphausen; so that
if the Americans should now cross, they would encounter not merely the
British right, but their whole army--not five thousand men, but eighteen
thousand. Sullivan therefore sat down, took Spear's statement word for
word "from his own mouth," and forwarded it to Washington, sending Spear
himself after the messenger to report verbally. "I made no comment and
gave no opinion," says Sullivan. Upon the heels of Spear came another
keen-eyed scout who had not seen the British. This was "Sergeant Tucker
of the Light Horse." He confirmed Spear's story. Washington now recalled
his orders and abandoned the intended attack on Knyphausen.

On the hill-slope south of the present road which crosses the Brandywine
at Chad's, Washington was resting under the shade of a cherry tree
(which fell in a storm a few years ago), when, about half-past one
o'clock, there came riding across the hillside fields from above,
avoiding the circuitous roads, Squire Thomas Cheyney, his hat gone, his
black hair streaming in the wind and his black eyes blazing with
excitement. The blooded mare he rode, trained to fox-hunting, carried
his two hundred pounds easily, and cleared ditches, fences and hedges.
Cheyney had been near the upper fords, and had suddenly come upon the
British as they moved down toward Osborne's Hill. They fired upon him as
he wheeled and galloped off, but he escaped unhurt. Reporting to
Sullivan, that officer received him discourteously, the chroniclers say;
as not improbably he might, for the contradictory reports as to th