“Take it away!” demanded Prescott haughtily.
“I’ll take you away for insulting my wife,” said the tavern-keeper. “Dennis, take down the cowhide and I will make this Britisher dance.”
The tavern-keeper applied the cowhide to the leaping General as an old-fashioned schoolmaster might have used a birch switch on an unruly boy.
It was a terrible chastisement that the General received, and he always remembered it. One day, in the course of the war, after he had been exchanged for General Lee, he met a man who looked like the tavern-keeper, and he shrunk back in alarm and said: “Oh, but I thought that was the man who cowhided me.”
These incidents are mainly true, and have but a thread of fiction.
Dennis became a local hero among the friends of Brother Jonathan, and took his place as the keeper of the alarm-post again.
“Dennis,” said the Governor to him one day, “our hearts are one; I can trust you anywhere. I will have important service for you some day. When there shall come some great emergency, I will know whom I can trust. General Washington trusts me, and I can trust you.”
What a compliment! Dennis threw up his arms, and leaped.
“I feel as though I could shake the heavens now. After General Washington, you, and after you—hurrah for Dennis O’Hay! I wish my old mother in Ireland could hear that, now. You shall never trust the heart of Dennis O’Hay to your sorrow. These times make men, and one does not get acquainted with himself until he is tried.”