"There!" said the first speaker. "Just what Pierriche said. Look at them. Look especially at that tall man sitting in the stern. The boat is approaching very quick. See, he raises his cap and salutes us."
"What a handsome fellow," said Marguerite.
"Yes, but look at his dress and that of his companions," exclaimed the others.
"Just what Perriche said," repeated the first.
"They are devils, not men," cried out a second.
"Just what Pierriche said. They are clad in sheet-iron."
"Yes, that is true. Sheet-iron men!"
And the frightened women, leaving the clothes on the jetty, fled precipitately up the bank.
The boat described a wide semi-circle in the river, and the young man sitting at the stern swept the north shore with a field glass. It was Cary Singleton, an officer of Morgan's riflemen, one of the chief corps of Arnold's army. He had been sent to reconnoitre.
Morgan's riflemen were all tall, stalwart men from Virginia and Maryland, and they were dressed in tunics of grey unbleached linen. The French would say vêtus de toile. But the panic of their sudden arrival, at Levis, changed toile into tôle, and the whole country side rang with the cry of "sheet-iron men." The amusing incident is historic.