this time had fired away all their ammunition (Atlee says that his battalion, at least, had entirely emptied their cartridge-boxes), and had used what charges could be got from the enemy's dead and wounded, when Huntington's ammunition cart "very luckily" came on the ground, and the men were re-supplied for still a third attack, which was threatened with the assistance of the Forty-second Highlanders; but the British this time kept a safe distance, and Parsons and Atlee remained on the hill, where they collected the enemy's dead and placed their wounded under the shelter of the trees. Thus bravely and effectively had this small body of Americans protected Stirling's flank and dealt the enemy the severest blows they suffered at any one point during the day, and this, as in the case of Stirling's men, with but small loss to themselves. From behind fences and trees, and, if tradition is correct, from the tops of trees as well, and from open ground on the hill, they kept up their destructive fire and successfully accomplished what they had been called upon to do.[144] That the British did not intend at this hour to drive Parsons and Atlee from their post is no detraction from the spirited fight made by these officers and their men, who knew nothing of the enemy's intentions, and who actually won the field from the troops they met. All along this front, from Stirling holding the road on the right to Parsons holding the left, with a long gap between them, the fighting thus far had resulted most favorably to the American side. The main line, as already stated, had lost not more than two officers killed and three or four wounded, with a small number of men; while Parsons and Atlee both report that in addition to the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Parry they lost only one or two men wounded. But, on the part of the British, Grant's two brigades, with the Forty-second Highlanders and the two companies of New York loyalists, lost, according to Howe's official report, two officers killed and four wounded, and among the men twenty-five killed and ninety-nine wounded. The four regiments alone which at different times encountered Parsons--the Seventeenth, Twenty-third, Forty-fourth, and Forty-second--lost in the aggregate eighty-six officers and men killed and wounded. [Footnote 143: _Atlee's Journal._ _Force_, 5th Series, vol. i., p. 1251.]