It is an odd coincidence that the Whitewood tree known as Major Andre's tree, near which the capture was effected, was struck by lightning the day that news was received at Tarrytown of Arnold's death. A monument now standing on the edge of the road has taken the place of the tree. We all know how the Skinners, Paulding, Van Wart and Williams made this capture which disclosed the treachery of Arnold. It was indeed a fortunate combination of circumstances that led these three incorruptible men to the right spot at the right moment. How many times did the death knell of independence seem on the point of being tolled, and how many times did the god of chance throw his weight into the ascending scale of the Colonists. But for a lapse of memory, the attempt of the British in the Summer of 1777 to capture the Hudson Valley and separate New England from her sisters might have been as successful as it proved disastrous. Lord George Germain sent Burgoyne peremptory instructions to proceed down the Hudson, and the instructions to Howe to move north to meet him were equally peremptory, but the latter were pigeonholed and forgotten for several weeks, and when remembered it was too late. Washington had decoyed Howe to Pennsylvania, and Burgoyne, lacking the expected support from the south, was defeated by the farmers. Pocantico, "a run between two hills," the Dutch called it Sleepy Haven Kill, hence Sleepy Hollow. "Far in the foldings of the hills winds this wizard stream," writes the grand sachem of all the wizards, who wove the romance of the headless horseman and the luckless schoolmaster so tightly about the spot that they are to-day part and parcel of it. The bridge over which the scared pedagogue scurried was some rods further up the stream than is the present crossing, for in those days the Post Road ran along the north side of the church, and the entrance was originally on that side of the building, while now it is on the western end which faces the present road.