All these trials wrung Washington's noble heart, and as he had no privacy in his headquarters, he sometimes rode out alone to think. A Quaker, hearing a noise in the bushes, once stole up cautiously, and found the general's horse tied to a tree. A few feet farther away, he beheld Washington kneeling in the snow, praying aloud for his country, with great tears streaming down his cheeks. The good Quaker crept away again unseen, but in telling the story some years later, he remarked that he felt at the time that the Lord could not but answer the fervent prayer of so good a man. LXXII. THE QUAKER WOMAN. The British quartered in Philadelphia were leading an easy and merry life; but several times during the winter Howe made plans to surprise Washington's troops. To his dismay, however, his plans always seemed known to the Americans, and therefore failed. Afraid that some spy might overhear him, Howe once held a secret meeting at night in the house of a Quaker woman, named Lydia Darrah. To make sure that he should not be overheard, he bade her go to bed, and see that all her family retired likewise. Lydia obeyed, and the general, thinking all was safe, explained his plan to his officers. But the Quaker woman had noiselessly slipped out of her room again, and was now standing at the door listening to all that was said. As soon as the talk was over she crept back to her room, and when the officers had all gone, Howe called her, as agreed, to lock the door behind him. But she pretended to be sound asleep, and let him knock at her door three times before she rose, yawning, to show him out. The next day, Lydia, who had not dared breathe a word of what she had heard to any one, said she was out of flour, and got a pass to go and buy some at a village near by. Meeting a patriot there, she quickly warned him of Washington's peril, and then quietly went home. The next day Howe crossly said to her: "It is very strange; you, I know, were asleep, for I knocked at your door three times before you heard me; yet it is certain we were betrayed. On arriving, we found Washington so prepared at every point that we have been compelled to march back without injuring our enemy, like a parcel of fools." Lydia heard this without making a sign, and not till the war was over did it become known that it was she who had saved the army.