When the war is over I can borrow a thousand pounds to keep a
roof over our heads and a fowl in the pot and pudding in the twifflers
while I am clearing the way to success. The prospect is not inviting,
I fear, but if, happily, it should appeal to you, I suggest that you
join your father in New York at the first opportunity so that we may
begin our life together as soon as the war ends. And now, whatever
comes, I would wish you to keep these thoughts of me: I have loved you,
but there are things which I have valued above my own happiness. If I
can not have you I shall have always the memory of the hours we have
spent together and of the great hope that was mine.

"While I was at home the people of our neighborhood set out at daylight
one morning for a pigeon party. We had our breakfast on an island.
Then the ladies sat down to knit and sew, while the men went fishing.
In the afternoon we gathered berries and returned at dusk with filled
pails and many fish. So our people go to the great storehouse of
Nature and help themselves."

CHAPTER XXVII

WHICH CONTAINS THE ADVENTURES OF SOLOMON IN THE TIMBER SACK AND ON THE
"HAND-MADE RIVER"

In the spring of 1779, there were scarcely sixteen thousand men in the
American army, of which three thousand were under Gates at Providence;
five thousand in the Highlands under McDougall, who was building new
defenses at West Point, and on the east shore of the Hudson under
Putnam; seven thousand were with Washington at Middlebrook where he had
spent a quiet winter; a few were in the south. The British,
discouraged in their efforts to conquer the northern and middle
colonies, sent a force of seven thousand men to take Georgia and South
Carolina. They hoped that Washington, who could not be induced to risk
his army in decisive action against superior numbers, would thus be
compelled to scatter and weaken it. But the Commander-in-Chief,
knowing how seriously Nature, his great ally, was gnawing at the vitals
of the British, bided his time and kept his tried regiments around him.
Now and then, a staggering blow filled his enemies with a wholesome
fear of him. His sallies were as swift and unexpected as the rush of a
panther with the way of retreat always open. Meanwhile a cry of
affliction and alarm had arisen in England. Its manufacturers were on
the verge of bankruptcy, its people out of patience.

As soon as the ice was out of the lakes and rivers, Jack and Solomon
jo