But it was mid-April before the first Forest Runner, with pelts, passed through the Sacandaga, twelve days out from Ty, and the woods nigh impassable, he gave account, what with soft drifts choking the hills and all streams over their banks. And then, for the first, we learned something concerning the great war that was waging everywhere around our outer borders,--how His Excellency had surprised the Hessians at Trenton, and had tricked Cornwallis and beat up the enemy at Princeton. It was amazing to realize that His Excellency, with only the frozen fragments of a meagre and defeated army, had recovered all the Jerseys. But this was so, thank God; and we wondered to hear of it. All this the Forest Runner told us as he ate and drank in the kitchen,--and how Lord Stirling had been made a major-general, and that we had now enlisted four fine regiments of horse to curb DeLancy's bold riders; and how that great Tory, John Penn, who was lately Governor of Pennsylvania, Thomas Wharton, and Benjamin Chew, had been packed off with other villains as prisoners into Virginia. Which pleased me, because of all that Quaker treachery in the proprietary; and I deemed them mean and selfish and self-righteous dogs who whined all day of peace and brotherhood and non-resistance, and did conduct most cruelly by night for greed and sordid gain. Not that I liked the New Englanders the better; but, of the two, preferred them and had rather they settled the Pennsylvania wilds than that the sly, smug proprietaries multiplied there and nursed treason at the breast. Well, our Coureur-du-Bois, in his greasy leather, quills, and scarlet braid, had other news for us less palatable. For it seemed that we had lost two thousand men and all their artillery when Fort Washington fell; that we had lost a hundred more men and eleven vessels to Sir Guy Carleton on Lake Champlain; that the garrison at Ty was a slim one and sick for the most, and the relief regiments were so slow in filling that three New England states were drafting their soldiery by force. There were rumours rife concerning the summer campaign, and how the British had a plan to behead our new United States by lopping off all New England. It was to be done in this manner: Guy Carleton's army was to come down from the North through the lakes, driving Gates, descend the Hudson to Albany and there join Clinton and his British, who were to force the Highlands, march up the river, and so hold all the Hudson, which would cut the head--New England--from the body of the new nation. And to make this more certain, there was now gathering in the West an army under Butler and Brant, to strike the Mohawk Valley, sweep through it to Schenectady, and there come in touch with Burgoyne. To oppose this terrible invasion from three directions we had forts on the Hudson and a few troops; but His Excellency was engaged south of these points and must remain there.