elves were taken into custody and had not the
better counsel of the staid and solid men prevailed, the sheriff and
those who aided him might have been hung to a gibbet erected in the
court-house yard. On the fifteenth Captain Cochran and forty Green
Mountain Boys, who had been apprised of the terrible affair, marched
over the mountain to arraign themselves upon the side of the Whigs if
the matter should come to real warfare. But fortunately further
bloodshed was averted, and never again did a Tory judiciary hold court
in Eastern Vermont.

Enoch went back to Bennington with some of Robert Cochran's company.
News of the Westminster affair had preceded him and the Catamount Inn
was thronged with earnest men discussing the matter and various other
news-packets which had lately come from other colonies. War with the
mother country seemed inevitable and Ethan Allen and men of his stamp
looked forward to it not without some eagerness. It was not that they
were reckless and irresponsible, or did not understand the terrible
situation in which the colonies might find themselves should the mother
country send across the sea a great army. But in the coming struggle
they beheld the salvation of their own people and of the Hampshire
Grants.

Therefore, perhaps even previous to this time, immediately following the
Westminster Massacre, these leaders had earnestly discussed the
possibilities of war and what the Green Mountain Boys could do to
further the cause of the colonies. On the shores of the beautiful lake
which was the colonists' boast, were two of the strongest fortresses--or
two which had been and could be made again the strongest--of the New
World, Ticonderoga and Crown Point. At Old Ti were many stores and
munitions of war and the place was held by a comparatively small guard
of red-coats who had a great contempt for, and therefore small
appreciation of, the valor of the colonials.

With these circumstances in mind Old Ti was already an object of the
conferences of Vermont's leading men. Possessing that fortress, Crown
Point, and Skenesboro, the lake would be free of British and the way to
Canada open; and at that early date it was strongly believed by the
patriots that the French descendants of the early settlers of Canada
would join the Colonies in their fight for freedom.

Young Enoch Harding did not see the leaders as he passed through
Bennington; but he was waylaid there a dozen times, and upon his road
home, to sa