"He may be forced to; otherwise, no. It would be folly to deliberately engage the superior force sent against him. If we only knew the direct path!" "If we only had some breakfast," sighed Richard. They wanted to ask their way at the scattered cottages and of the men at work in the fields, but they knew not friends from foes. Once they lay for an hour under a plum thicket, not venturing to move, while two men, who had met in the road, stopped their horses for a talk. The afternoon was beginning to wane when they came to a secluded farmhouse where an old woman gave them something to eat, and, thinking they were Tories, warned them that a body of Americans was said to be camped three miles to the southwest. They thanked her, but once out of her sight they turned joyfully in the forbidden direction, and in less than an hour were called to halt by two men with bayonets. "Take us to your general, and take us quick," said Dunn. La Fayette recognized Dunn, instantly, and received his news with much emotion, for he had hoped to strike a telling blow on some of the outposts, and maybe cut off a foraging party, whose members would be valuable prisoners for exchange. Now there was nothing but to turn back. But even as they were making ready for a retreat over the road by which they had come, his scouts came flying through the lines with the news that Grant was close upon them in the rear, having made a circuitous march in order to get between them and their camp at Valley Forge. La Fayette set his teeth as he said:-- "Then 'tis fight, though that means death to every brave man here." But Dunn told of Matson's ford still unguarded, and the commander was quick to seize the one chance left to save his men, and before midnight the little band was safely over the river, with their faces toward Valley Forge. There they were received with cheers by their comrades, who, having heard some wild rumours brought by two countrymen from beyond the Schuylkill, had feared the worst for them. That night, long after Richard was sleeping the sleep of healthy but exhausted youth, Dunn sat in the officers' quarters and told how, with a military rain-coat over his workman's blouse, Richard Clevering had played the gallant to the beauty of Philadelphia and the _fiancée_ of Howe's chief of staff. CHAPTER VIII. A MAID'S DREAM AND THE DEVIL'S WOOING. "A pleasing land of drowsyhead it was: Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever flushing round a summer sky." --THOMPSON.