And now at last several loyalist brigades were formed as auxiliaries to the royal army, and Tom and I were soon happy in the consciousness of serving our king, and in the possession of the green uniforms that distinguished the local from the regular force. We were of Colonel Cruger's battalion, of General Oliver De Lancey's brigade, and both were so fortunate as to obtain commissions, Tom receiving that of lieutenant, doubtless by reason of his mother's relationship to General De Lancey, and I being made an ensign, on account of the excellent memory in which my father was held by the loyal party. Mr. Faringfield, like many another father in similar circumstances, was outwardly passive upon his son's taking service against his own cause: as a prudent man, he had doubtless seen from the first the advantage of having a son actually under arms for the king, for it gave him and his property such safety under the British occupation as even his lady's loyalist affiliations might not have sufficed to do. Therefore Tom, as a loyalist officer, was no less at home than formerly, in the house of his rebel father. I know not how many such family situations were brought about by this strange war. CHAPTER VIII. _I Meet an Old Friend in the Dark._ I shall not give an account of my military service, since it entered little into the history of Philip Winwood. 'Twas our duty to help man the outposts that guarded the island at whose Southern extremity New York lies, from rebel attack; especially from the harassments of the partisan troops, and irregular Whiggery, who would swoop down in raiding parties, cut off our foragers, drive back our wood-cutters, and annoy us in a thousand ways. We had such raiders of our own, too, notably Captain James De Lancey's Westchester Light Horse, Simcoe's Rangers, and the Hessian yagers, who repaid the visits of our enemies by swift forays across the neutral ground between the two armies. But this warfare did not exist in its fulness till later, when the American army formed about us an immense segment of a circle, which began in New Jersey, ran across Westchester County in New York province, and passed through a corner of Connecticut to Long Island Sound. On our side, we occupied Staten Island, part of the New Jersey shore, our own island, lower Westchester County, and that portion of Long Island nearest New York. But meanwhile, the rebel main army was in New Jersey in the Winter of 1776-77, surprising some of our Hessians at Trenton, overcoming a British force at Princeton, and going into quarters at Morristown. And in the next year, Sir William Howe having sailed to take Philadelphia with most of the king's regulars (leaving General Clinton to hold New York with some royal troops and us loyalists), the fighting was around the rebel capital, which the British, after two victories, held during the Winter of 1777-78, while Washington camped at Valley Forge.