"We have been camping here in this thicket since last night, and if there is anybody in all the company more tired of soldiering than I am, I would like to meet him. I wore a hole in the heel of my stocking on the second day, and got such a blister because of it that I've been obliged to go barefoot ever since. "We have had plenty to eat, for the folks along the road were most kind; but it's sleeping that has been the worst on me, though the corporal says I never can hope to be a soldier till I'm able to lay down in three or four inches of water and get as much rest as I would at home in bed. I tell him I don't hope to be one any more, for I've had about enough of it, though of course I shall stick by the company till we've taken the fort, and it's pretty certain we shall do that, because now there are two hundred and seventy men in the ranks. "Colonel Easton enlisted thirty-nine of his militia before we got to Bennington, and there we were joined by the Green Mountain Boys under the command of Colonel Ethan Allen. "It surprised me to find that a good many of the people don't believe we are doing right in trying to take away the fort from the king's troops, and the corporal says that unless this thing is a success we are all like to be hanged for traitors, because his majesty will make an example of them who are foremost in the work--which means us. "Two hours after we halted last night Colonel Benedict Arnold, who is said to have gone from New Haven as captain of a company, to Cambridge, arrived here with a few men and a large amount--so it seems to me--of military supplies. "Although knowing that Colonel Allen is in charge of this force, he claimed the right to take command, and, so the corporal says, made display of a commission signed by the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, declaring that it entitled him to take charge of all the troops. Now, although I'm not a soldier--the corporal says I never will be--I've got sense enough to understand that if I enlisted under Colonel Easton, and was willing he should give way to Colonel Allen so we might have the Green Mountain Boys with us, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety have got nothing to do with saying who shall lead in the battle--though I hope to goodness we shan't see one. "The corporal says that no committee is going to scare Ethan Allen, and it's certain, so those of the Green Mountain Boys with whom I've talked say, that this stranger won't get himself into command of the company, even though, as is said, he brings one hundred pounds in money, two hundred pounds' weight of gunpowder, the same of leaden balls, and one thousand flints, to carry all of which, and himself, he has ten horses.