“Here are more Hessians.” And as he spoke we heard the notes of a bugle.
“Put me somewhere,” I said, “and quick.”
“No,” he cried. “Here, set your snapsack back of this forge. Put on this leather apron. Smudge your face and hands.”
It took me but a minute, and here I was, grimy and black, a smith again, with my sack hid under a lot of old iron and a broken bellows.
As they rode up—some two dozen yagers—I let fall the bellows handle, at which my master had set me to work, and went out to the doorway. There, not at all to my satisfaction, I saw the small Hessian, Captain von Heiser, our third and least pleasant boarder, the aide of General Knyphausen. Worse still, he was on Lucy. It was long before I knew how this came to pass. They had two waggons, and, amidst the lamentations of the hamlet, took chickens, pigs, and grain, leaving orders on the paymaster, which, I am told, were scrupulously honoured.
Two horses needed shoeing at once, and then I was told Lucy had a loose shoe, and my master called me a lazy dog, and bid me quit staring or I would get a strapping, and to see to the gentleman’s mare, and that in a hurry. It was clear the dear thing knew me; for she put her nose down to my side to get the apples I liked to keep for her in my side pockets. I really thought she would betray me, so clearly did she seem to me to understand that here was a friend she knew. A wild thought came over me to mount her and ride for my life. No horse there of the heavy Brandenburgers could have kept near her. It would have been madness, of course, and so I took my six-pence with a touch of my felthat, and saw my dear Lucy disappear in a cloud of dust, riding toward the town.
“That was a big risk for thee,” said the smith, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “I will mount and ride with thee across-country through the Welsh Barony. There thou wilt not be far from the river. It is a good ten-mile business.”
After a little, when I had had some milk and rum, the horses were saddled, and we crossed by an ox-road through the forest past the settlement of Cardington, and then forded Cobb’s Creek, A cross-road carried us into the Haverford road, and so on by wood-ways to the old Welsh farms beyond Merion.
We met no one on the way save a farmer or two, and here, being near to the Schuylkill, my old master farrier took leave of me at the farm of Edward Masters, which lay in our way, and commended me to the care of this good Free Quaker.
There I was well fed, and told I need to look out only on this side the river for Tories. They were worse than Hessianers, he said, and robbed like highwaymen. In fact, already the Tories who came confidently back with the British army had become a terror to all peaceful folk between Sweedsboro and our own city. Their bands acted under royal commissions, some as honest soldiers, but some as the enemies of any who owned a cow or a barrel of flour, or from whom, under torture, could be wrested a guinea. All who were thus organised came at length to be dreaded, and this whether they were bad or better. Friend Masters had suffered within the week, but, once over the Schuylkill, he assured me, there need be no fear, as our own partisans and foragers were so active to the north of the stream as to make it perilous for Tories.