Off. Tuesday—Wednesday.—If the batteaux should get here to-morrow. One hundred teams—
(Another Officer enters the tent.)
1st Off. How goes it abroad, Colonel St. Leger?
2nd Off. Indeed, Sir, the camp is as quiet as midnight. It's a breathless heat. But there are a few dark heads swelling in the west. We may have a shower yet ere night.
Bur. Good news that. But here is better, (giving the other an open letter.)
St. Leger. Ay, ay, that reads well, Sir.
Bur. And here is another as good. Yes Sir, yes Sir,—they are flocking in from all quarters—the insurgents are laying down their arms by hundreds. It must be a miserable fragment that Schuyler has with him by this.
St. L. General Burgoyne, is not it a singular circumstance, that the enemy should allow us to take possession of a point like that without opposition,—so trifling a detachment, too? Why, that hill commands the fort,—certainly it does.
Bur. Well—well. They are pretty much reduced, I fancy, Sir. We shall hardly hear much more from them. Let me see,—this is the hill.
St. L. A pity we could not provoke them into an engagement, though! They depend so entirely upon the popular feeling for supplies and troops, and the whole machinery of their warfare, that it is rather hazardous reckoning upon them, after all. If we could draw them into an engagement now, the result would be certain.