Had Jonas Benson been of a more wakeful mind this hot afternoon, it is quite likely that this narrative would never have been written. But he snored on while behind the closed door of the parlor were whispered words which, had they reached the ears of the landlord of the Three Oaks, would have put him instantly on the alert. The year was 1777, a fateful one indeed for the American arms in the struggle for liberty--a year of both blessing and misfortune for the patriot cause. Within its twelve months the Continental army achieved some notable victories; but it suffered, too, memorable defeats. It was the year when human liberty seemed trembling in the balance, when all nations--even France--stood aloof, waiting to see whether the star of the American Colonies was setting or on the ascendant. The British army, under Howe and Clinton, occupied New York. Washington and his little force lay near Philadelphia, then the capital of the newly-formed confederation. New Jersey--all the traveled ways between the two armies--was disputed territory, disturbed continually by a sort of guerilla warfare most hard for the peacefully-inclined farmers and tradespeople to bear. Spies of both sides in the great conflict infested the country: foraging parties, like the rain, descended upon the just and the unjust; and neighbors who had lived in harmony for years before the war broke out, now were at daggers’ points. The Tories had grown confident because of the many set-backs endured by the patriot forces. Many even prophesied that, when Burgoyne’s army, then being gathered beyond the Canadian border, should descend the valleys of upper New York and finally join Howe and Clinton, the handful of Americans bearing arms against the king would be fairly swept into the sea, or ground to powder between the victorious British lines. Jonas Benson was intensely patriotic, and the Three Oaks had given shelter oft and again to scouts and foraging parties of the Continental troops. The inn-keeper had given the pick of his horses to the army, reserving few but such nags as were positively needed for the coach which went down to Trenton at irregular intervals. There were more than his staid coach horses in the stable on this afternoon, however, and the fact was much to his distaste. There had arrived at the Three Oaks the evening before a private carriage drawn by a pair of handsome bays and driven by a most solemn-faced Jehu, whose accent was redolent of Bow Bells. With the carriage came a gentleman--a fierce, military-looking man, though not in uniform--who rode a charger, which, so Jonas told his wife, would have made a saint envious, providing the latter were a judge of horseflesh. Inside the carriage rode a very pretty girl of sixteen or seventeen, whose dress and appearance were much different from the plain country lasses of that region.