During the night of Christmas Day, 1776, ferried by doughty fishermen from far Gloucester and Marblehead,—the same hardy fellows who had handled his boats the night he abandoned the heights of Brooklyn,—he got twenty-five hundred men across the river through pitchy darkness and pounding ice; and in the early light and frost of the next morning he took Trenton, with its garrison of nine hundred Hessians, at the point of the bayonet. There he waited,—keeping his unwilling militiamen to their service past the opening of the year by dint of imperative persuasion and a pledge of his own private fortune for their pay,—until Cornwallis came down post-haste out of New York with eight thousand men. Moving only to change his position a little, he dared to wait until his adversary was encamped, at nightfall of the 2d of January, 1777, within ear-shot of his trenches; then slipped northward in the night, easily beat the British detachment posted at Princeton, as the next day dawned and had its morning; and could have taken or destroyed Cornwallis’s stores at New Brunswick had his men been adequately shod to outstrip the British following hard behind them. As it was, he satisfied himself with having completely flanked and thwarted his foe, and withdrew safe to the heights of Morristown. The British had hastily retired from Burlington upon the taking of Trenton,—so hastily that they took neither their cannon nor even their heavier baggage away with them. Now they deemed it unsafe to take post anywhere south of New Brunswick, until spring should come and they could see what Washington meant to do. Once again, therefore, the Americans controlled New Jersey; and Washington ordered all who had accepted General Howe’s offer of pardon either to withdraw to the British lines or take the oath of allegiance to the United States. Daring and a touch of genius had turned despair into hope. Americans did not soon forget that sudden triumph of arms, or that the great Frederick of Prussia had said that that had been the most brilliant campaign of the century. [Illustration: HESSIAN BOOT]