When morning dawned the restless woman was on the watch again. The roll of a drum came to her ears from a distance. Soon afterwards troops appeared, weary and discontented warriors, marching back. They had had their night's journey in vain. Instead of finding the Americans off their guard and an easy prey, they had found them wide awake, and ready to give them the hottest kind of a reception. After manoeuvring about their lines for a vulnerable point, and finding none, the doughty British warriors turned on their track and marched disconsolately homeward, having had their labor for their pains.
The army authorities were all at sea. How had this information got afoot? Had it come from the Darrah house? Possibly, for there the conference had been held. The adjutant-general hastened to his quarters, summoned the fair Quakeress to his room, and after locking the door against intrusion, turned to her with a stern and doubting face.
"Were any of your family up, Lydia," he asked, "on the night when I had visitors here?"
"No," she replied; "they all retired at eight o'clock.
This was quite true so far as retiring went. Nothing was said about a subsequent rising.
"It is very strange," he remarked, musingly. "You, I know, were asleep, for I knocked at your door three times before you heard me; yet it is certain that we were betrayed. I am altogether at a loss to conceive who could have given Washington information of our intended attack. But on arriving near his camp we found him ready, with troops under arms and cannon planted, prepared at all points to receive us. We have been compelled to turn on our heels, and march back home again, like a parcel of fools."
As may well be surmised, the patriotic Lydia kept her own counsel, and not until the British had left Philadelphia was the important secret of that signal failure made known.
THE SIEGE OF FORT SCHUYLER.
All was terror in the valley of the Mohawk, for its fertile fields and happy homes were threatened with the horrors of Indian warfare. All New York State, indeed, was in danger. The hopes of American liberty were in danger. The deadliest peril threatened the patriotic cause; for General Burgoyne, with an army of more than seven thousand men, was encamped at St. John's, at the foot of Lake Champlain, prepared to sweep down that lake and Lake George, march to the valley of the upper Hudson, driving the feeble colonial forces from his path, and by joining with a force sent up the Hudson from New York City, cut off New England from the remaining colonies and hold this hot-bed of rebellion at his mercy. It was a well-devised and threatening scheme. How disastrously for the royalists it ended all readers of history know. With this great enterprise, however, we are not here concerned, but with a side issue of Burgoyne's march whose romantic incidents fit it for our pages.