n were setting out in a hired sloop for the
Highlands next morning there were tears in the dark eyes of "Mis'
Scott."

"Ain't she a likely womern?" Solomon asked again when with sails spread
they had begun to cut the water.

Near King's Ferry in the Highlands on the Hudson they spent a night in
the camp of the army under Putnam. There they heard the first note of
discontent with the work of their beloved Washington. It came from the
lips of one Colonel Burley of a Connecticut regiment. The
Commander-in-Chief had lost Newport, New York and Philadelphia and been
defeated on Long Island and in two pitched battles on ground of his own
choosing at Brandywine and Germantown.

The two scouts were angry.

It had been a cold, wet afternoon and they, with others, were drying
themselves around a big, open fire of logs in front of the camp
post-office.

Solomon was quick to answer the complaint of Burley.

"He's allus been fightin' a bigger force o' well trained, well paid men
that had plenty to eat an' drink an' wear. An' he's fit 'em with jest
a shoe string o' an army. When it come to him, it didn't know nothin'
but how to shoot an' dig a hole in the ground. The men wouldn't enlist
fer more'n six months an' as soon as they'd learnt suthin', they put
fer hum. An' with that kind o' an army, he druv the British out o'
Boston. With a leetle bunch o' five thousand unpaid, barefoot, ragged
backed devils, he druv the British out o' Jersey an' they had twelve
thousan' men in that neighborhood. He's had to dodge eround an' has
kep' his army from bein' et up, hide, horns an' taller, by the power o'
his brain. He's managed to take keer o' himself down thar in Jersey
an' Pennsylvaney with the British on all sides o' him, while the best
fighters he had come up here to help Gates. I don't see how he could
'a' done it--damned if I do--without the help o' God."

"Gates is a real general," Burley answered. "Washington don't amount
to a hill o' beans."

Solomon turned quickly and advanced upon Burley. "I didn't 'spect to
find an enemy o' my kentry in this 'ere camp," he said in a quiet tone.
"Ye got to take that back, mister, an' do it prompt, er ye're goin' to
be all mussed up."

"Ye could see the ha'r begin to brustle under his coat," Solomon was
wont to say of Burley, in speaking of that moment. "He stepped up clus
an' growled an' showed his teeth an' then he begun to git rooined."

Burley had kept a public house for