So thoroughly had New York’s sea-gate been locked, that it had trouble even to dispose of its garbage, because tugboat captains feared to venture far enough to sea to dump it. Wherever men turned, whatever they tried to do, it was as if there lay a great, dead hand on the city. _Closing in on New York_ The only activity that remained in full progress, apparently, was the activity of the news bulletin-boards. The newspapers had erected them everywhere, in all the squares. Far into the night they were served. Almost continually since the Battle of the Connecticut they had been announcing the names of New England places successively taken by the approaching army. Now, suddenly, their news shifted. A bulletin went up dated from Eaton’s Neck, Long Island. “Large fleet of steamers,” it said, “crossing Long Island Sound from direction of New Haven, apparently bound for this shore.” “Two passenger steamers of New Haven Line,” said the next bulletin, “five large freighters, eight lighters. Making for coast east of Oyster Bay.” From Oyster Bay came a dispatch: “Fifteen vessels putting into Cold Spring Harbor, with large number of troops. It is believed that these are forces convoyed over the Sound in vessels captured at New Haven, to move against New York through Long Island.” “Village of Cold Spring occupied. Troops approaching Oyster Bay,” was the news that grew in great letters on the boards an hour later. Nothing more came from either of these two points. Evidently the enemy had cut communications at once. _Along the Connecticut Shore_ News began to arrive now from the Connecticut shore. The advancing forces, having joined west of Bridgeport, were moving in mass along the contracted coastal plain of southwestern Connecticut. Troop trains, preceded by armored pilot engines, rolled in long procession along the whole system of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, all the tracks of which had been repaired by civilians impressed to do the work. On all the many tracks there was traffic in only one direction,--westward, toward New York. The trains, moving in echelon, went forward steadily as clock work. Along the magnificent motor road that was the old Boston Post Road, cavalry and motor patrols and detachments advancing in the same direction, seized town after town. They occupied Fairfield, where Paul Revere stopped over night on his way to report to Washington. They entered with swords clanking and imperious motor horns croaking into old Saugatuck, where the Colonials had fought General Tryon when he landed to burn Danbury. They took Norwalk and South Norwalk. They quartered men in the estates of Darien. They swept on through rich Stamford, whose inhabitants are Connecticut people by residence and New Yorkers by occupation. They took Greenwich. _The Invaders of Long Island_