“Your devoted, humble servant,
“DARTHEA.
“To Mad(e) Wynne,
“At the Hill Farm,
“Chestnut Hill.”
My aunt said it was sweet and thoughtful of Darthea, and we had a fine laugh over the burglary of that bad man, McLane. The woman went back with two notes stitched into the lining of her gown; one was from, my aunt, and one I wrote; and to this day Darthea alone knows what it said. God bless her!
It was March 20 of ‘78 before I felt myself fully able to set out for camp. I had run no great risk. The country had been ravaged till it was hard to find a pig or a cow. Farmers were on small rations, and the foragers had quit looking for what did not exist. One dull morning I had the mare saddled, and got ready to leave. It was of a Friday I went away; my aunt as unwilling to have me set out as she had been eager to have me go the day before. My Quaker training left me clear of all such nonsense, and, kissing the dear lady, I left her in tears by the roadside.
XIX
It is a good eighteen-mile ride to Valley Forge over the crooked Perkiomen road, which, was none the better for the breaking up of the frost. I rode along with a light heart, but I was watchful, being so used to disastrous adventures. Happily, I met with no difficulties.
A few miles from the bridge General Washington had built, I fell in with a party of horse. The officer in command seemed at first suspicious, but at last sent me on with two troopers. On the last Sunday of the month Friends were persistently in the habit of flocking into the city to General Meeting. They were not unwelcome, for they were apt to carry news of us, and neither we nor the enemy regarded them as neutrals. Our Commander-in-chief, in an order of this day, declared “that the plans settled at these meetings are of the most pernicious tendency,” and on this account directed General Lacy “that the parties of light horse be so disposed as to fall in with these people.”
It was one of these parties of horse I had encountered. The officer sent me on with a guard, and thus, in the company of two troopers, I rode through a fairly wooded country to the much-worn road leading down to the river. Here my guards left me with the picket at the bridge. It was a half-hour before the officer here stationed was satisfied, and meanwhile I stared across the Schuylkill at the precipitous bluffs, and wondered where lay the army which had passed the winter back of them. A few men along the far shore, and on the hill beyond a little redoubt, were all the signs of life or of war and its precautions. The bridge, over which presently I rode, was of army waggons weighted with stone, and on top rails with rude scantling. On the high posts driven into the river-bed for stay of the bridge were burned the names of the favourite generals. Once over, I walked Lucy up a cleft in the shore cliff, and came out on the huts of General Varnum’s brigade. The little world of an army came in view. I was on the first rise from the stream, a mile and a half to the south of the Valley Creek. To westward the land fell a little, and then rose to the higher slope of Mount Joy. To north the land again dropped, and rose beyond to the deep gulch of the Valley Creek. On its farther side the fires of a picket on Mount Misery were seen. Everywhere were regular rows of log huts, and on the first decline of every hill slope intrenchments, ditches, redoubts, and artillery. Far beyond, this group of hills fell gradually to the rolling plain. A mile away were the long outlying lines of Wayne, and the good fellows with whom I had charged at Germantown.
Everywhere the forests were gone. Innumerable camp-fires and a city of log huts told for what uses they had fallen. On the uplands about me ragged men were drilling; far away I heard the cavalry bugles. A certain sense of elation and gaiety came over me. It lasted no long time, as I rode Lucy over the limestone hillocks and down to the lesser valley, which far away fell into the greater vale of Chester.