There conflicting intelligence was brought to him. At one moment it was asserted that the enemy had moved off with precipitation, leaving only a covering party behind; at another, that the whole army was filing off to the right and left to attack the Americans. While he was endeavoring to obtain reliable information on which to predicate orders, La Fayette arrived at the head of the main body of the advanced corps. Having satisfied himself that no important force of the enemy was upon either flank, Lee determined to march on. His whole command now amounted to about four thousand troops, exclusive of Morgan's corps and the Jersey militia. The broken country was heavily wooded to the verge of the plain of Monmouth. Under cover of the forest, Lee pressed forward until near the open fields, when he formed a portion of his line for action, and, with Wayne and others, rode forward to reconnoiter. From observations and intelligence, he concluded that the column of the British army which he saw deploying on the left were only a covering party of about two thousand men; and entertaining hopes that he might succeed in cutting them off from the main army, he maneuvered accordingly. Wayne was detached, with seven hundred men and two pieces of artillery, to attack the covering party in the rear; not, however, with sufficient vigor to cause them to retreat to the main body. Meanwhile Lee, with a stronger force, endeavored, by a short road leading to the left, to gain the front of the party. Small detachments were concealed in the woods, at different points on the enemy's flanks, to annoy them. At about nine o'clock in the morning, just as Wayne was prepared to make a descent upon the enemy, a party of American light horse, advancing on the right, observed the Queen's Dragoons upon an eminence in the edge of a wood, parading as if they intended to