As their adjutant remarked to Mrs. Darrah, they had been on a fool's errand and accomplished nothing. "I sincerely wish," wrote Washington to the president of Congress, "that they had made an attack, as the issue, in all probability, from the disposition of our troops and the strong situation of our camp, would have been fortunate and happy. At the same time, I must add, that reason, prudence, and every principle of policy, forbade us from quitting our post to attack them." General Howe, in his dispatches, said, "They were so strongly intrenched that it was impossible to attack them." They had no other intrenchments than two small redoubts, one on each hill near the head-quarters. Three days afterward Washington broke up his encampment at Whitemarsh, and, in the midst of a deep snow, marched to the Schuylkill, crossed it at Swedes' Ford, and established his winter quarters at Valley Forge. Hundreds of the soldiers made that dreary march of nineteen miles with bare feet, and the pathway of the patriot army might have been traced all the way by hundreds of foot-marks in the snow stained with blood. * Let us follow them thither, and in the head-quarters of the chief, which stands near the banks of the Schuylkill, sit down and ponder upon the wondrous love of country which kept that suffering army together during the winter and spring of 1778. We left Whitemarsh at about two o'clock for the Schuylkill, passing, on our way, over Barren Hill, the scene of a skillful military movement by La Fayette, with a body of Americans, in May, 1778. Barren Hill is a small village lying upon the western slope of a rough eminence, about four miles west of Whitemarsh. From its summit a fine view of the surrounding country may be obtained. There, on the right of the road leading toward the Schuylkill from Chestnut Hill to Conshohocken (Matson's Ford), is the old Lutheran church which La Fayette occupied as quarters during his brief tarry on the hill. According to an inscription upon a tablet in the western gable, its title is "St. Peter's," and the time of erection 1761. By the road-side near the church is a quaint-looking school-house, covered with stucco. The church, the school-house, and two strong stone houses composed this settlement, then in the wilderness, when La Fayette made it his point of observation, and out-maneuvered General Grant. Within the old church-yard, sitting upon a recumbent sand-stone slab, with half-effaced inscription, I made this sketch; and here let us open the record and receive instruction from the chronicler. As this is the first time in the course of our journey that wc have met La Fayette as commander-in-chief of an expedition, it is a proper