"Waal, we won't argue it out," Peter said, "for I'm not good at argument, and I came here to fight and not to talk. Besides, I want to get to Mount Holly in time to jine in this battle, so I guess we'll be moving."
Paying for the breakfast, they started at once in the direction of Mount Holly, which lay some twenty-five miles away. As they approached the place early in the afternoon they overtook several men going in the same direction. They entered into conversation with them, but could only learn that some 450 of the militia from Philadelphia and the counties of Gloucester and Salem had arrived on the spot. The men whom they had overtaken were armed countrymen who were going to take a share in the fight on their own account.
Entering the place with the others, Peter found that the information given him was correct.
"We better be out of this at once," he said to Harold, "and make for Bordentown."
"You don't think that there is much importance in the movement," Harold said as they tramped along.
"There aint no importance whatever," Peter said, "and that's what I want to tell 'em. They're never thinking of attacking the two thousand Hessians at Bordentown with that ragged lot."
"But what can they have assembled them for within twelve miles of the place?" Harold asked.
"It seems to me," the hunter replied, "that it's jest a trick to draw the Germans out from Bordentown and so away from Trenton. At any rate, it's well that the true account of the force here should be known. These things gets magnified, and they may think that there's a hull army here."
It was getting dusk when they entered Bordentown, and Harold was glad when he saw the little town, for since sunset on the evening before they had tramped nearly sixty miles. The place seemed singularly quiet. They asked the first person they met what had become of the troops, and they were told that Colonel Donop, who commanded, had marched an hour before with his whole force of 2000 men toward Mount Holly, leaving only 80 men in garrison at Bordentown.
"We are too late," Harold said. "They have gone by the road and we kept straight through the woods and so missed them."