As the afternoon wore on and we arrived nowhere, we became disturbed by doubts as to our direction. It was true that we seemed to be following the general course of the river, but was it the right river? Hadn't we gone trailing off somewhere on a second-class tributary that had been leading us all day through a weird, bedeviled territory that probably wasn't on the map at all? The brief daylight was fading and it was important that we arrive somewhere, pretty soon. We must make inquiry. It would be better to rouse even one of the seven sleepers than to wander aimlessly into the night. At the next house, I said, we would knock.
But at the next house we actually discovered something moving—something outside. As we came nearer it took the form of a man, a sad man, dragging a crooked limb from a wood-pile. I drew up.
"Good afternoon," I said. "Can you tell us where we are?"
"Good afternoon," I said. "Can you tell us where we are?"
"Why, yes," he grunted, as he worked and pulled at the limb. "You're at Valley Forge."
Valley Forge! Heavens! We were within twenty miles of Philadelphia, on the Schuylkill. At the pace we had been going it did not seem reasonable. This must be enchantment, sure enough.
"Look here," I said, "you don't mean that this is Valley Forge where Washington was quartered."
"Don't know anything about that," he said, still grunting over the crooked limb, "but I've been quartered here for more 'n sixty years, an' it's always been the same Valley Forge in my time."