oose sashes of the windows had transformed each dripping tree and
shrub to icy stalactites that silvered under the moon's cold touch.

"'Tis a beautiful sight, ladies," said a bluff, hearty, middle-aged
man, joining the group by the window. "But God send the spring to us
quickly, and spare us any more such cruel changes! My lady moon looks
fine enough, glittering in yonder treetops; but I doubt not she looks
down upon many a poor fellow shivering under his tattered blankets in
the camp beyond. Had ye seen the Connecticut tatterdemalions file by
last night, with arms reversed, showing their teeth at his Excellency,
and yet not daring to bite; had ye watched these faint-hearts, these
doubting Thomases, ripe for rebellion against his Excellency, against
the cause, but chiefly against the weather,--ye would pray for a thaw
that would melt the hearts of these men as it would these stubborn
fields around us. Two weeks more of such weather would raise up not one
Allan Brewster, but a dozen such malcontent puppies ripe for a
drum-head court-martial."

"Yet 'tis a fine night, Gen. Sullivan," said Col. Hamilton, sharply
nudging the ribs of his superior officer with his elbow. "There would
be little trouble on such a night, I fancy, to track our ghostly
visitant." Both of the ladies becoming interested, and Col. Hamilton
having thus adroitly turned the flank of his superior officer, he went
on, "You should know that the camp, and indeed the whole locality here,
is said to be haunted by the apparition of a gray-coated figure, whose
face is muffled and hidden in his collar, but who has the password pat
to his lips, and whose identity hath baffled the sentries. This
figure, it is said, forasmuch as it has been seen just before an
assault, an attack, or some tribulation of the army, is believed by
many to be the genius or guardian spirit of the cause, and, as such,
has incited sentries and guards to greater vigilance, and has to some
seemed a premonition of disaster. Before the last outbreak of the
Connecticut militia, Master Graycoat haunted the outskirts of the
weather-beaten and bedraggled camp, and, I doubt not, saw much of that
preparation that sent that regiment of faint-hearted onion-gatherers to
flaunt their woes and their wrongs in the face of the general himself."

Here Col. Hamilton, in turn, received a slight nudge from Mistress
Schuyler, and ended his speech somewhat abruptly.

Mistress Thankful was not unmindfu