Knyphausen, however, steadily pressed the Americans back, forced them from the high ground down to the edge of the creek, and finally drove them across. By half-past ten o'clock this was accomplished, and the British line was then formed half a mile back from the stream, where it lay until half-past four in the afternoon, the artillery keeping up a threatening but not serious fire upon Wayne's position on the east side, which his batteries returned. On the whole, the Americans thought themselves doing fairly well. Washington's secretary sent off a despatch to Congress saying that the British loss must be three hundred killed and wounded, "while ours does not exceed fifty altogether." Part of the British force at the ford on this morning was a rifle corps commanded by Major Patrick Ferguson, a young Scotchman recently arrived in America, and subsequently killed in the sanguinary fight on King's Mountain. In a letter describing the Brandywine battle he says his men were lying concealed in a skirt of woods when "a rebel officer in a huzzar dress" passed in front, followed by another in dark green and blue "mounted on a good bay horse and wearing a remarkably high cocked hat." Ferguson ordered three men to steal near and fire upon them, but believing that they would surely be killed, so near were they riding, he felt the act to be murder and recalled his men. Again, having first passed to some distance, the officer on the bay horse returned, and rode within easy shooting distance, but Ferguson again restrained himself. The next day he learned from wounded Americans who fell into the hands of the British "that General Washington was all the morning with the light troops, and attended only by a French officer in a huzzar dress, he himself mounted and dressed in every respect as above described." The Friends whom we left gathered in the wheelwright-shop adjourned with some agitation. "While we were sitting therein," Joseph Townsend says, "some disturbance was discovered near the house and about the door, which occasioned some individuals to go out to know the cause, and they not returning and the uneasiness not subsiding, suspicions arose that something serious was taking place: the meeting accordingly closed."