This threw all the detail of our affairs as largely into my hands as was possible with a man like my father. I think he guessed my intention to leave him for the army, and gladly improved this chance to load me with needless affairs, and all manner of small perplexities. My aunt was better--in fact, well; but here was this new trouble. What could I do? My father declared that the old clerk would soon be able to resume his place, and meanwhile, he should have no one to help him but me. Now and then, to my surprise, he made some absurd business venture, and was impatient if I said a word of remonstrance. Twice I was sent to Maryland to see after our tobacco plantations. I was in despair, and became depressed and querulous, seeing no present way, nor any future likelihood, of escape. My father was well pleased, and even my aunt seemed to me too well satisfied with the ill turn which fate had done me. My father was clearly using the poor old clerk’s calamity as an excuse to keep me busy; nor was it at all like him to employ such subterfuges. All his life long he had been direct, positive, and dictatorial; a few years back he would have ordered me to give up all idea of the army, and would as like as not have punished resistance with cold-blooded disinheritance. He was visibly and but too clearly changing from the resolute, uncompromising man he had once been. Was he cunning enough to know that his weakness was for me a bondage far stronger than his more vigorous rule had ever been? XV My personal difficulties were not made more easy to bear by the course of public events. Howe had taken New York. In November Fort Washington fell. Jack, who was within its walls, got away, but was slightly wounded. Our English general, Lee, had begun already to intrigue against Mr. Washington, writing, as Dr. Rush confided to my aunt, that he, Lee, ought to be made dictator. My aunt received the impression that the doctor, who loved his country well, was becoming discontented with our chief; but neither then nor later did she change her own opinion of the reserved and courteous Virginian. He soon justified her views of his capacity. On December I he broke down the bridges in his rear over the Raritan, and marched through Jersey with a dwindling army. At Princeton he had but three thousand men; destroying every boat, he wisely put the broad Delaware between his army and the enemy. Lord Cornwallis halted at the river, waiting for it to freeze that he might cross, and until this should happen went back with Howe to New York. About December 15 of ‘76, General Lee was captured, and, strange as it may now seem, no calamity yet come upon us created more consternation. Meanwhile our own alarmed citizens began to bury their silver plate. While the feeble were flying, and the doubtful were ready to renew their oath to the king, the wary and resolute commander-in-chief saw his chance.