Our duties, of course, kept us much apart--that is, Jack and myself; but as he made use, or pretended to make use, of me as an orderly, I was able to see more of him than otherwise would have been possible. My pistols I asked him to use until I could reclaim them, and I made him happy with the tobacco I brought, and which I soon saw him dividing among other officers; for what was Jack’s was always everybody’s. And, indeed, because of this generosity he has been much imposed upon by the selfish. XVII On this night of the 2d of October, Jack told me we should move next morning or the day after. He had seen General Wayne on an errand for our colonel. “A strong talker, the general; but as ready to fight as to talk.” In fact, ammunition was issued, and before dawn on the 4th the myriad noises of an army breaking camp aroused me. It was a gray morning over-head, and cool. When we fell into line to march, Jack called me out of the ranks. “There will be a fight, Hugh. Mr. Howe has sent troops into Jersey, and weakened his hold on the village, or so it is thought. In fact, you know that, for it was you that fetched the news. If--I should get killed--you will tell your aunt--not to forget me--and Darthea too. And my father--my father, Hugh--I have written to him and to Miss Wynne--in case of accident.” The day before a fight Jack was always going to be killed. I do not think I ever thought I should be hit. I had, later in the war, a constant impression that, if I were, it would be in the stomach, and this idea I much disliked. I fell to thinking of Darthea and Jack, wondering a little, until the drum and fife struck up, and at the word we stepped out. I have no intention to describe more of the fight at Germantown than I saw, and that was but little. It seemed to me confusion worse confounded, and I did not wonder that Graydon had once written me from the North that we were in a “scuffle for liberty.” The old village was then a long, broken line of small, gray stone houses, set in gardens on each side of the highway, with here and there a larger mansion, like the Chew House, Cliveden, and that of the Wisters. The ascent from the city is gradual. At Mount Airy it is more abrupt, and yet more steep at Chestnut Hill, where my aunt’s house, on the right, looks down on broken forests, through which the centre marched by the Perkiomen road. The fight on our right wing I knew nothing of for many a day.