July 2.—Artillery landed with eight brass cannon. Camped on Common. S. A. notified Thirteen Sisters.
July 4.—Thirty-eighth Regiment landed at Hancock's Wharf, with a company of artillery, great quantity of ordnance, stores, etc., three companies of the Royal Irish Regiment, called the Eighteenth Foot, and the whole of the Forty-seventh Regiment. Also bringing news that the Tenth and Fifty-second Regiments would arrive in a few days! S. A. sent riders to York and Philadelphia. Much hunger in town. Many young children dying.
Newell paused, glanced over the pages again, then shut the little book and placed it in his breast-pocket.
Mount sat grim and silent, twisting the scarlet thrums on his sleeves; the others, with painful, abstracted faces, stared at vacancy through the mounting smoke from their long clay pipes.
Presently the landlord came in, glanced silently around, saluted Mount with a quiet bow, paid his respects to me in a similar manner, and whispered that we might sup at our pleasure in the "Square Room" above.
So, with a salute to the company, we rose and left the tap-room to the silent smokers of the long pipes.
The so-called "Square Room" of the "Wild Goose Tavern" was a low, wainscoted chamber, set with small deep windows. It was an ancient room, built in the fashion of a hundred years ago, more heavily wrought than we build in these days; and although the floor-beams had settled in places, and the flooring sagged and rose in little hillocks, yet the place suggested great solidity and strength. Nor was it to be wondered at, for this portion of the tavern had at one time been a detached block-house pierced for musketry, and the long loopholes were still there above the wainscoting.
Spite of its age and fortified allure, the "Square Room" was cheerful under its candle-light and illuminated sconces. Rows of framed pictures hung along the walls, the subjects representing coaching scenes in England and also many beautiful scenes from the sporting life of country gentlemen.
Relics of the hunting field also adorned the walls, trophies of fox-masks, with brush and pads, groups of hunting-horns, whips, and spurs, with here and there an ancient matchlock set on the wall, flanked by duelling-pistols, powder-horns, and Scottish dirks.
The furniture was of light oak, yet very clumsy and old-fashioned, being worn shiny like polished Chinese carvings. Pipe-racks of oak were screwed into the wainscoting under long shelves, well stored with pewters, glass tankards, punch-bowls, and tobacco-jars.