“Did you not invite them to settle?”
“Yes, fool that I was to do it; but I did not know them then as I do now. I would as soon have let in fiends from the pit.”
“Then they are not to blame for hanging on to their possessions. You should not have asked them here.”
“They have learned to despise us, because we are so easily taken in. They are right in that; a greater set of dunderheads than those under my command never congregated before. If it were not for two or three of my officers, my blockheads would have their teeth drawn in the night, and never know it.”
“What slander upon such men as the worthy Paul Swedlepipe and Mynheer Ten Eyck.”
“There you have a specimen. What can a man do who must be guided, in a manner, by the advice of such men as those? It is enough to make one give up in despair.”
“But they will fight, if it is necessary.”
“Yes; it is their only redeeming quality. They are too thick-headed to appreciate the danger. But to my plan. I shall march out with forty men in the night, and get near enough to Windsor to attack them early in the morning. We will take the fellows prisoners and send them to the nearest English post.”
“Very good; how many men can the English muster?”
“Not over twenty, and those we will take by surprise.”