“Not since the American officers stayed here in the fall o’ ’76,” put in old Mr. Valentine, from the settle. “I reckon you’ll be safe enough here, Miss Elizabeth.”
“Of course I shall. Why, our troops patrol all this part of the country, Lord Cathcart told us at King’s Bridge, and we have naught to fear from them.”
“No, the British foragers won’t dare treat Philipse 60 Manor-house as they do the homes of some of their loyal friends,” said Miss Sally, who was no less proud of her relationship with the Philipses, because it was by marriage and not by blood. “But the horrible ”Skinners,“ who don’t spare even the farms of their fellow rebels—”
“Bah!” said Elizabeth. “The scum of the earth! Williams has weapons here, and with him and the servants I’ll defend the place against all the rebel cut-throats in the county.”
The major thought to make a last desperate attempt to dissuade Elizabeth from remaining.
“That’s all well enough,” said he; “but there are the rebel regulars, the dragoons. They’ll be raiding down to our very lines, one of these days, if only in retaliation. You know how Lord Cornwallis’s party under General Grey, over in Jersey, the other night, killed a lot of Baylor’s cavalry,—Mrs. Washington’s Light Horse, they called the troop. And the Hessians made a great foray on the rebel families this side the river.”
“Ay,” chirped old Valentine; “but the American Colonel Butler, and their Major Lee, of Virginia, fell on the Hessian yagers ’tween Dobbs’s Ferry and Tarrytown, and killed ever so many of ’em,—and I wasn’t sorry for that, neither!”
“Oho!” said Colden, “you belong to the opposition.”
“Oh, I’m neither here nor there,” replied the old man. “But they say that there Major Lee, of Virginia, is the gallantest soldier in Washington’s army. He’d lead his men against the powers of Satan if Washington gave the word. Light Horse Harry, they call him,—and a fine dashing troop o’ light horse he commands.”