On the hill-slope south of the present road which crosses the Brandywine at Chad's, Washington was resting under the shade of a cherry tree (which fell in a storm a few years ago), when, about half-past one o'clock, there came riding across the hillside fields from above, avoiding the circuitous roads, Squire Thomas Cheyney, his hat gone, his black hair streaming in the wind and his black eyes blazing with excitement. The blooded mare he rode, trained to fox-hunting, carried his two hundred pounds easily, and cleared ditches, fences and hedges. Cheyney had been near the upper fords, and had suddenly come upon the British as they moved down toward Osborne's Hill. They fired upon him as he wheeled and galloped off, but he escaped unhurt. Reporting to Sullivan, that officer received him discourteously, the chroniclers say; as not improbably he might, for the contradictory reports as to the British movement were, upon a subject so terribly momentous, exasperating enough. But as Sullivan hesitated, Cheyney demanded to see Washington himself, and was accordingly sent to him. Washington ordered him to dismount. "Now," said he, "draw me a sketch of the upper roads. Where did the British cross? and where are they now?" Cheyney alighted and made the plan. Washington seemed to hesitate, as if doubting the information. The ardent squire, in the intensity of the moment, cried, "Take my life, general, if I deceive you!" If the commander doubted, however, there came on the instant further word. Colonel Bland had sent another despatch to Sullivan, dated at "a quarter-past one o'clock," and saying that the enemy were then arriving in great force on Osborne's Hill, a little to the right of Birmingham meeting-house. This despatch Sullivan sent instantly to Washington, and the word Cheyney had brought was now made sure beyond peradventure. Bland's confirmation of Cheyney's news aroused the injudicious but brave commander of the right wing, and he moved his troops at once up toward Birmingham. His immediate command, he says in one of the several defensive letters written after the battle, marched a mile from the position it occupied to that in which it met the enemy. On a hill just west of the meeting-house, from which, as they looked north-west, they could see the British on Osborne's Hill, they made their line of battle, and Cornwallis, as he sat upon his horse watching them through his glass, cried out with a round army oath, "The damned rebels form well!"