The devotion of a majority of the people of the place to the American cause had its reward in the lasting association of the town with the most romantic and tragic episode of the war; and the incorruptible patriotism of three Westchester County men not only averted what might have been a crushing calamity, but immortalized the scene of their resistance to temptation. On the 24th day of September, 1780, Major André, bearing dispatches of a treasonable nature from General Benedict Arnold, then in command of the American forces at West Point, was captured on the highway at a place now marked by a monument, by John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart. These obscure militiamen, soon to become famous, were watching the road, when a horseman appeared riding toward the south. He was promptly challenged, ordered to dismount, and examined as to his business and destination. His answers to the questions put to him by his captors confirmed their suspicion that something of unusual importance was in the air. The determination to search the unfortunate young officer more thoroughly was met with offers of a large sum of money; but the militiamen were not to be bribed, and to their fidelity is due the discovery of the plot to place West Point in British hands. The moral effect of Arnold’s fall was counteracted in large measure by the incorruptibility of André’s captors, and the monument which marks this historic site commemorates the integrity of the American militiamen quite as much as the dramatic episode which ended the careers of Arnold and André. [Illustration: WASHINGTON IRVING.] [Illustration: “SUNNYSIDE.” THE HOME OF WASHINGTON IRVING.] Tarrytown has had the double good fortune to be the scene of the most striking act of the drama of Arnold’s treason, and to be the custodian of one of the few American legends. In his youth, Washington Irving knew the region intimately. He was given to solitary walks, for he was a dreamer by nature and habit. Wolfert’s Roost was even then an old farm-house, built close to the water’s edge, where the glen broadens to the river. It had colonial and revolutionary associations, and, above all, it had the charm of a situation of singular beauty. Irving seems early to have fallen under the spell of the shaded waterside and the romantic glen. In 1835, after an absence of seventeen years in Europe and an extensive journey through the South and West, which bore fruit in _A Tour on the Prairies_, the recollections and affections of his youth drew him to Sunnyside, now about a mile and a half south of the railway station of Tarrytown, and he became the possessor of a home which will always be associated with our early literary history. The house was enlarged, and began to take on that air of ripe and reposeful beauty which made it an ideal home for a man of letters. Under this roof his later books were written, and here he was sought by the most interesting men of his time.