“The guard will be turned out and we shall end this fray by cooling our heels in the prison huts on the hill,” he declaimed. “If we run a foot-race, who is to say which of us first reaches the forge? Again--and I say I never served with such thick-witted troops, when I fought under General Arnold at Saratoga--those with shoes to their feet have the advantage over those that are bound up in bits of cloth and clumsy patches of hide. Draw lots, I say, before the picket is down upon us!” The good-natured crowd cheered the boy orator, and hauled him from his perch with such hearty thumps that he feared they would break him in two. Suddenly the noise was hushed as if the wranglers had been stricken dumb. Fur-capped heads turned to face down the winding valley, and without need of an order the company spread itself along the roadside in a rude, uneven line. Every man stood at attention, his head up, his shoulders thrown back, hands at his sides. Thus they stood while they watched a little group of horsemen trot toward them. In front rode a commanding figure in buff and blue. The tall, lithe frame sat the saddle with the graceful ease of the hard-riding Virginia fox-hunter. The stern, smooth-shaven face, reddened and roughened by exposure to all weathers, lighted with an amiable curiosity at sight of this motley and expectant party, the central figure of which was the butcher, Master Ritter, who had dropped to his knees as if praying for his life. General Washington turned to a sprightly looking, red-haired youth who rode at his side, as if calling his attention to this singular tableau. The Marquis de Lafayette shrugged his shoulders after the French manner, and said, laughingly: “It ees vat you t’ink? Vill they make ready to kill ’im? Vat they do?” Just behind them pounded General Mühlenberg, the clergyman who had doffed his gown for the uniform of a brigadier, stalwart, swarthy, laughter in his piercing eyes as he commented: “To the rescue! The victim is a worthy member of my old Pennsylvania flock. This doth savor of a soldier’s court-martial for honest Jacob Ritter.” The cavalcade halted, and the soldiers saluted, tongue-tied and embarrassed, scuffling, and prodding one another’s ribs in an attempt to urge a spokesman forward, while General Washington gazed down at them as if demanding an explanation. The butcher was about to make a stammering attempt when the string of his apron parted, and the ten cow-horns were scattered in the snow. He dived in pursuit of them, and his speech was never made. Because Jabez Rockwell was too light and slender to make much resistance, he was first to be pushed into the foreground, and found himself nearest the commander-in-chief. He made the best of a bad matter, and his frank young face flushed hotly as he doffed his battered cap and bowed low.