At length morning broke upon that unhappy neighborhood, and with it came persons from the battle bringing the appalling news that the Americans had been defeated, and many of them slain, or made prisoners, and that the enemy were in full possession of the forts. Then other parties arrived whose woe-stricken faces only confirmed the sad intelligence. Soon anxious inquiries sped from house to house where any lived who had escaped from the slaughter, to learn about this one and that, who had gone to the battle, but had not returned. Jennie could get no tidings of her husband, though she spent the greater part of the day in watching on the road, and several times even fancied that she saw him coming; but alas! only to find it a delusion. It added to her fears for her husband, when a neighbor named Monell, at whose house she called, met her with the sorrowful news that his brother, Robert Monell, first lieutenant in Capt. Van Keuren's company, had been killed in the battle. At length the apprentices arrived, their faces begrimed with powder, and one of them crying for his brother, who had been shot down by his side, and died instantly.[17] The other, who was Joseph Elder, before spoken of, a young man of giant frame, had narrowly escaped death, having his hat and jacket pierced with bullets in the engagement! But having been separated from Mr. Van Arsdale, they had not seen him since the battle, and so were ignorant as to his fate. The wretched woman was in despair; many of her neighbors had now returned and the prolonged absence of her Tunis seemed to forbode that he had either been killed or captured by the enemy. But now still others arrive, and she is led from their statements, to hope that Tunis has escaped, and is making his way homeward through the mountains. Her heart leaps with joy, and she returns to the house, and even indulges a laugh as her eye gets a sight of the mush kettle still hanging on the trammel, as she placed it there in the morning; no meal stirred in, and she having eaten nothing the whole day. Towards night Tunis arrived, on horseback, with his brother-in-law William Wear, who at Jennie's request, had gone out some distance to look for him.[18] He was fast asleep from exhaustion when they reached the house, (Wear behind him and holding him on the horse), and his face so blackened with powder that his wife hardly knew him. He was much depressed in spirits, but grateful to God who had preserved and restored him to his family and friends. That evening brought in his captain, Van Keuren, who for some cause was not in the fight, with his minister, Rev. Andrew King, and many other neighbors--a house full,--some to congratulate Van Arsdale on his escape, others, with anxious faces to inquire after missing friends, and others still to learn the particulars of the battle. The account he gave of what happened after leaving home for the scene of conflict, was briefly as follows: