“Are my quarters ready, Colonel Brereton?” asked a tall man, standing in the doorway.
“This way, yer Excellency,” obsequiously cried the landlord, catching up a candle and coming out from behind the bar. “I’ve set apart our settin’-room and our bestest room —thet ’ere with the tester bed—for yer honourable Excellency.”
“Come with me, Colonel Brereton,” ordered the general, as he followed the publican.
Motioning the tavern-keeper out of the room, Washington threw aside his wet cloak and hat, and taking from a pocket what looked like a piece of canvas, he unfolded and spread it out on the table, revealing a large folio map of New Jersey.
“You know the country,” he said; “show me where the Raritan can be forded.”
“Here, here, and here,” replied Brereton, indicating with his finger the points. “But this rain to-night will probably so swell it that there’ll be no crossing for come a two days.”
“Then if we destroy the bridge Cornwallis cannot cross for the present?”
“No, your Excellency. But if ’t is their policy to again try to outflank us, they’ll send troops from Staten Island by boat to South Amboy; and by a forced march through Monmouth they can seize Princeton and Trenton, while Cornwallis holds us here.”
“’T is evident, then, that we can make no stand except at the Delaware, should they seek to get in our rear. Orders must be sent to secure all the boats in that river, and to—”
A knock at the door interrupted him, and in reply to his “Come in,” an officer entered, and, saluting, said hurriedly: “General Greene directs me to inform your Excellency that word has reached him that a brigade of the New Jersey militia have deserted and have seized and taken with them the larger part of the baggage train. The commissary reports that the stores saved will barely feed the forces one day more.”