At this point, Dayton’s Regiment, which had been so troublesome as skirmishers, hastened step, came into regimental order, and quickly crossed the Rahway bridge. But, to the surprise of the advancing enemy, the division of General Maxwell was in battle array, silently inviting battle. General Knyphausen halted to bring up artillery and his full force of five thousand men. He stopped also, to burn Connecticut Farms, because, “shots from its windows picked off his officers and guides.” Among the victims to his responsive fire, was the wife of Chaplain Chapman of Dayton’s Regiment. The news of her death spread, as a spark over pine or prairie regions. When within a half mile of Springfield, the Hessian general again halted for consultation as to his next order. Cannon sounds began to be heard from various directions, answering signal for signal. The ascending smoke of beacon-fires crowned every summit. The whole country seemed to have been upheaved as if by some volcanic force. Maxwell’s Brigade was just across the Rahway, and less than one-third the strength of the Hessian’s command. But General Knyphausen was too good a soldier not to peer through Maxwell’s thin line, and recognize, in solid formation, the entire army of Washington, waiting in silence to give him a hearty soldier’s reception. The day passed; and for once, both armies were at full halt. Knyphausen, for the time, was Commander-in-Chief of both, for it devolved upon him alone to order battle. He was filling the part of Pharaoh, and not that of Moses. One monotonous sound echoed from a summit near Morristown. It was the “minute-gun,” which had been designated by the American Commander-in-Chief as a continuous signal whenever he wanted every man within hearing, who had a gun, to come at once to his demand. Night came on, and with it, rain; but still the minute-gun boomed on, with solemn cadence, and instead of smoking hill-tops, the blaze of quickened beacons illumined the dull sky as if New Jersey were all on fire. The night covered the Hessians from view, and when morning came they attempted to regain Staten Island; but the tide retired, leaving boats stranded and the mud so deep that even cavalry could not cross in safety. Having heard on the first of June that Clinton was _en route_ for New York, Knyphausen simply strengthened the New York defences and awaited the arrival of his superior officer. On the tenth, Washington wrote: “Their movements are mysterious, and the design of this movement not easily penetrated.” As a matter of fact, there were few operations of the war which bore so directly upon the safety of the American army and the American cause, as the operations before Springfield during June, 1779; and the conduct of both armies indicated an appreciation of their importance.