A tall, portly-looking man stood on a table in the midst of a crowd of farmer-like individuals, haranguing them in an energetic manner regarding the crisis in affairs of the country. He was dressed in the scarlet and buff regimentals of a British officer, although, like the most of his audience, he was a resident of the neighborhood. The time was that important period in the history of our country just succeeding the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, when every man felt called upon to decide the part he should take in the contest which all saw was impending. The place was the vicinity of Scoharie Kill, a branch of the Mohawk river, in the State of New York. The persons, George Mann, a loyalist of great wealth, three of the king's Commissioners, and the yeomanry of the neighborhood, from the gray-haired man of sixty winters, to the youth of sixteen and eighteen summers: in fact, all the male population of the Scoharie valley capable of bearing arms. The king had "honored" Mann with a Captain's commission, and the Commissioners had called the people together for the purpose of administering the oath of allegiance and recruiting from their number a company, to the command of which Mann was to be assigned. They had been ordered to bring their arms with them, and a large majority had done so. Their equipments were as varied as their opinions—and these were of many shades—from the determined and bitter Tory, through the various degrees of loyalty to the wavering and undecided; and thence to the lukewarm, warm, devoted, and ardent Whig. Such as had taken the oath were adorned with a piece of scarlet cloth stuck in their hats; while some, more enthusiastic than others, wore scarlet caps. All these were enrolled and mustered under arms, preparatory to receiving the drill from their new Captain. Many of the lukewarm and undecided took the oath of allegiance from fear of consequences. There were but a limited few bold and determined enough to abjure the oath and all allegiance to the king. Of this number were Nicholas Stemberg and William Dietz, who had been so earnest in their denunciations of the tyranny and injustice of the mother country, that, when they left for home on the evening of the first day, they were assailed with denunciations of vengeance. They were proclaimed as traitors, and threatened with a nocturnal visit by the bitterest among those whom the occasion had shown to be their enemies. Fearing these threats would be put into execution, Stemberg spent the night in the woods, while his family were trembling with fear at home. On his return to that home in the morning, he was agreeably disappointed to find it undisturbed, and, with his neighbor Dietz, again repaired to the parade, with an unaltered determination, however, to take no obligation of allegiance. They found, on arriving at Mann's house, that upward of one hundred were enrolled and scattered about the grounds; while others, who