The story opens in the year 1777, during one of the most critical periods of the Revolution. Hadley Morris, our hero, is in the employ of Jonas Benson, the host of the Three Oaks, a well-known inn on the road between Philadelphia and New York. Like most of his neighbors, Hadley is an ardent sympathizer with the American cause. When, therefore, he is intrusted with a message to be forwarded to the American headquarters, the boy gives up, for the time, his duties at the Three Oaks and sets out for the army. Here he remains until after the fateful Battle of Brandywine. On the return journey he discovers a party of Tories who have concealed themselves in a woods in the neighborhood of his home. By approaching cautiously to the group around the fire, Hadley overhears their plan to attack his uncle for the sake of the gold which he is supposed to have concealed in his house. With the assistance of Colonel Knowles, who, although a British officer, seems to have taken a liking to Hadley, our hero successfully thwarts the Tory raid. No sooner is the uncle rescued, however, than he ungratefully shuts the door upon his nephew. Thereupon Hadley immediately returns to the American army and joins the forces under that dashing officer, “Mad Anthony” Wayne. In the disastrous night engagement at Paoli our hero is left upon the battlefield wounded. In this condition he is found by his old friend, Lafe Holdness, the American scout, who treats the wound so skillfully that our hero is enabled to return home. But not for long. No sooner is he strong enough to ride than he again sets out for the army, which is just then preparing for that terrible winter at Valley Forge. Hadley slept that night at a friendly farmer’s, some miles to the north of Germantown. A large force of British were quartered about where Washington’s army lay the first day the boy had crossed the river and made his way to the Commander-in-Chief’s headquarters with the dispatches so nearly lost by the wounded courier. As far as he could learn, the Americans still rested at Skippack Creek, to which locality they had retired after the enemy entered Philadelphia. He made a long detour the next morning to avoid the Germantown outposts, but fell in with a foraging party of Continentals before noon, and was near to losing his horse. But he was not so afraid of these marauders now as he had been the night he was halted on the Germantown road and his dispatches seized. So, after an argument with these fellows and the mention of Colonel Cadwalader’s name, he got away, with directions regarding the shortest path to headquarters. He was halted a good many times before he found the Pennsylvania troops; but the pickets saw that he was a recruit and let him through without trouble.