ents of the American troops and the actions of her
neighbors of the opposite party.

She kept a journal of the things that happened about her in those
eventful days, and from this we will give some extracts. It must be
understood that in writing her journal, the people designated as the
"enemy" were the soldiers under Washington, and that "gondolas" were
American gunboats.

"From the 13th to the 16th we had various reports of the advancing
and retiring of the enemy; parties of armed men rudely entered the
town and diligent search was made for tories. Some of the gondola
gentry broke into and pillaged Rd Smith's house on the bank. About
noon this day [16th] a very terrible account of thousands coming
into the town, and now actually to be seen on Gallows Hill: my
incautious son caught up the spyglass, and was running towards the
mill to look at them. I told him it would be liable to
misconstruction."

The journal states that the boy went out with the spyglass, but could
get no good place from which he could see Gallows Hill, or any troops
upon it, and so went down to the river, and thought he would take a view
of the boats in which were the American troops. He rested his spyglass
on the low limb of a tree, and with a boyish curiosity inspected the
various boats of the little fleet, not suspecting that any one would
object to such a harmless proceeding.

But the people on the boats saw him, and did object very much; and the
consequence was, that, not long after he reached his mother's house, a
small boat from one of the vessels came to shore. A party of men went to
the front door of the house in which they had seen the boy enter, and
began loudly to knock upon it. Poor Mrs. Morris was half frightened to
death, and she made as much delay as possible in order to compose her
features and act as if she had never heard of a refugee who wished to
hide himself from his pursuers. In the mild manner in which Quaker women
are always supposed to speak, she asked them what they wanted. They
quickly told her that they had heard that there was a refugee, to whom
they applied some very strong language, who was hiding somewhere about
here, and that they had seen him spying at them with a glass from behind
a tree, and afterwards watched him as he entered this house.

Mrs. Morris declared that they were entirely mistaken; that the person
they had seen was no one but her son, who had gone out