The fact that the hopes of this American couple had suffered a partial collapse, must be attributed rather to the internal state of affairs than to the military situation. While it is true that no great military objective had been gained as a result of the three years of fighting, yet the odds at the present moment were decidedly on the American side. Still the country was without anything fit to be called a general government. The Articles of Confederation, which were intended to establish a league of friendship between the thirteen states, had not yet been adopted. The Continental Congress, continuing to decline in reputation and capacity, provoked a feeling of utter weariness and intense depression. The energies and resources of the people were without organization. Resources they had. There was also a vigorous and an animated spirit of patriotism, but there were no means of concentrating and utilizing these assets. It was the general administrative paralysis rather than any real poverty that tried the souls of the colonists. They heartily approved of the war; Washington now held a higher place in their hearts than he had ever held before; peace seemed a certainty the longer the war endured. But they were weary of the struggle and handicapped by the internal condition of affairs. Jim and his wife typified the members of the poorer class, the class upon whom the war had descended with all its horror and cruelty and desolation. Whatever scanty possessions they had, cows, corn, wheat or flour, had been seized by the foraging parties of the opposing forces, while their horse and wagon had been impressed into the service of the British, at the time of the evacuation of the city, to cart away the stores and provisions. A means of occupation had been denied Jim during the period of stagnation and what mere existence could now be eked out depended solely in the tillage of the land upon which he dwelled. Nevertheless the Cadwaladers maintained their outward cheer and apparent optimism throughout it all but still they yearned inwardly for the day when strife would be no more. "I can't see as t' how we're goin' to git off eny better when this here whole thin's over. We're fightin' fur independence, but the peopul don't want to change their guver'ment; Washington 'll be king when this is over." Jim was ruminating aloud, stripping with his thumb nail the bark from a small branch which he had picked from the ground. "'Twas the Quebec Act th' done it. It was supposed to reestablish Popery in Canada, and did by right. But th' Americans, and mostly those in New England who are the worst kind of Dissenters and Whigs got skeered because they thought the Church o' England or the Church o' Rome 'd be the next thing established in the Colonies. That's what brought on the war." "We all don't believe that. Some do; but I don't."