Some of our best men--Montgomery, Hendricks, Humphreys, Captain Cheseman, and other officers, and nearly two hundred men--had been killed out-right, and the host of wounded made veritable hospitals of both the headquarters. Nearly half of our total original force had been taken prisoners. With the shattered remnants of our little army we were still keeping up the pretence of a siege, but there was no heart in our operations, since reverse had broken the last hope of raising assistance among the French population. We were too few in numbers to be able now to prevent supplies reaching the town, and everybody gloomily foresaw that when the river became free of ice, and open for the British fleet to throw in munitions and re-enforcements, the game would be up. All this Dr. Teunis told me, and often during the narration it seemed as if my indignant blood would burst off the healing bandages, so angrily did it boil at the thought of what poltroonery had lost to us. It was a relief to turn to the question of my own adventure. It appeared that I had been wounded by the first and only discharge of the cannon at the guard-house, for there was discovered, embedded in the muscles over my ribs, a small iron bolt, which would have come from no lesser firearm. They moreover had the honor of finding a bullet in my right forearm, which was evidently a pistol-ball. And, lastly, my features had been beaten into an almost unrecognizable mass of bruised flesh by either a heavy-ringed fist or a pistol-butt. "Pete Gansevoort dragged you off on his back," my kinsman concluded. "Some of our men wanted to go back for the poor General, and for Cheseman and McPherson, but that Campbell creature would not suffer them. Instead, he and his cowards ran back as if the whole King's army were at their heels. You may thank God and Gansevoort that you were not found frozen stiff with the rest, next morning." "Ah, you may be sure I do!" I answered. "Can I see Peter?" "Why, no--at least not in this God-forgotten country. He has been made a colonel, and is gone back to Albany to join General Schuyler. And we are to go--you and I--as soon as it suits your convenience to be able to travel. There are orders to that purport. So make haste and get well, if you please." "I have been dangerously ill, have I not?" "Scarcely that, I should say. At least, I had little fear for you after the first week. Neither of the gunshot wounds was serious. But somebody must have dealt you some hearty thwacks on the poll, my boy. It was these, and the wet chill, and the loss of blood, which threw you into a fever. But I never feared for you."