Molly Pitcher, or, as she was afterward more familiarly known, Captain Molly, was a sturdy young Irish woman of some twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, short, thick-set, with red hair, a freckled face, and a keen, piercing eye, which gave token of a spirit of mischief ever ready for a frolic or a fight. She was the wife of a Sergeant in an artillery corps, which had seen service since the commencement of the war, and was attached to him with all the warmth of the Irish disposition. She had followed him through all his campaigns, and was with him at Fort Clinton, in the Hudson highlands, when that post was attacked and captured by Sir Henry Clinton. Here, too, she gave a specimen of that reckless courage which distinguished her at Monmouth some nine months after. Her husband, who was in the act of touching off his piece, seeing the British scaling the walls, and getting in his rear, dropped his match, and calling to Molly to follow, fled as fast as his legs would carry him. She, determined not to waste powder and ball, and knowing that her "petticoats" would protect her retreat in a measure, picked up the linstock, fired the piece, and then scampered off. She escaped scot-free, and when the scattered fugitives from the forts were collected, and the artillery was attached to the main army, she accompanied her husband as a sutler, and was with him through that bitter winter at Valley Forge. When Sir Henry Clinton evacuated Philadelphia, and took up his march across the Jerseys, Washington left his winter camp and prepared to follow, hoping to get an opportunity to strike a blow which should animate his own troops and effectually cripple, perhaps capture, the British army. On the plains of Monmouth the hostile armies met in battle array. Of the details of the action it is not our province to speak. It will suffice our purpose to say that Lee had been ordered to attack the British on their first movement, and engage them until the main army of the Americans could be brought into action by Washington in person. The first part of his orders he had obeyed; the latter, for reasons never fully explained, he did not conform to, but retreated unexpectedly toward the main body, which movement was timely checked by Washington, who ordered the whole army into action. It became necessary, however, for a portion to fall back a second time; and to check the pursuit, the artillery, to which Molly's husband was attached, was stationed on an eminence, in the rear of a hedge-row, for that purpose. Molly herself was engaged in bringing water from a spring to assuage the thirst of the men at the guns, when she saw her husband struck down by a cannon-shot from the enemy, which cut him nearly in two, killing him instantly; at the same time she heard the commandant order the piece withdrawn, as he had no one to fill the place now vacant. Molly heard the order, and maddened by her loss, rushed forward, exclaiming as she did so: "No! you