Near King's Ferry in the Highlands on the Hudson they spent a night in the camp of the army under Putnam. There they heard the first note of discontent with the work of their beloved Washington. It came from the lips of one Colonel Burley of a Connecticut regiment. The Commander-in-Chief had lost Newport, New York and Philadelphia and been defeated on Long Island and in two pitched battles on ground of his own choosing at Brandywine and Germantown. The two scouts were angry. It had been a cold, wet afternoon and they, with others, were drying themselves around a big, open fire of logs in front of the camp post-office. Solomon was quick to answer the complaint of Burley. "He's allus been fightin' a bigger force o' well trained, well paid men that had plenty to eat an' drink an' wear. An' he's fit 'em with jest a shoe string o' an army. When it come to him, it didn't know nothin' but how to shoot an' dig a hole in the ground. The men wouldn't enlist fer more'n six months an' as soon as they'd learnt suthin', they put fer hum. An' with that kind o' an army, he druv the British out o' Boston. With a leetle bunch o' five thousand unpaid, barefoot, ragged backed devils, he druv the British out o' Jersey an' they had twelve thousan' men in that neighborhood. He's had to dodge eround an' has kep' his army from bein' et up, hide, horns an' taller, by the power o' his brain. He's managed to take keer o' himself down thar in Jersey an' Pennsylvaney with the British on all sides o' him, while the best fighters he had come up here to help Gates. I don't see how he could 'a' done it--damned if I do--without the help o' God." "Gates is a real general," Burley answered. "Washington don't amount to a hill o' beans." Solomon turned quickly and advanced upon Burley. "I didn't 'spect to find an enemy o' my kentry in this 'ere camp," he said in a quiet tone. "Ye got to take that back, mister, an' do it prompt, er ye're goin' to be all mussed up." "Ye could see the ha'r begin to brustle under his coat," Solomon was wont to say of Burley, in speaking of that moment. "He stepped up clus an' growled an' showed his teeth an' then he begun to git rooined." Burley had kept a public house for sailors at New Haven and had had the reputation of being a bad man in a quarrel. Of just what happened there is a full account in a little army journal of that time called _The Camp Gazette_. Burley aimed a blow at Solomon with his fist. Then as Solomon used to put it, "the water bu'st through the dam." It was his way of describing the swift and decisive action which was crowded into the next minute. He seized Burley and hurled him to the ground. With one hand on the nape of his neck and the other on the seat of his trousers, Solomon lifted his enemy above his head and quoited him over the tent top. Burley picked himself up and having lost his head drew his hanger, and, like a mad bull, rushed at Solomon. Suddenly he found his way barred by Jack.