About sunset we mounted, and travelled hard all that night and until the middle of next day, when we halted, for refreshment, at the house of one who was truly a "publican and sinner", for he was a great TORY. Not knowing what secret intelligence the man might convey to the enemy, who were but fifteen miles off, I had him taken up and put under guard. We then got dinner, for which we honorably paid the poor woman his wife. And now comes my woeful story. While, after dinner, I was busily employed in catechising my prisoner, how should the devil be employed, but in tempting my men with the distilled juice of the apple? Having, by some ill luck, found out that there was a barrel of it in the house, they hastened to the poor landlady, who not only gave them a full dose for the present, but filled their bottles and canteens. As we pushed on, after dinner, in high spirits, for the enemy, I could not but remark how constantly the men were turning up their canteens. "What the plague have you got there, boys," said I, "that you are so eternally drinking." "Water! sir, water! nothing but water!" The rogues were drinking brandy all the time; but, by way of whipping the devil round the stump, they called it `water'! that is, `apple water'. Presently, finding, from their gaiety and frolicksomeness, what they had been after, I ordered a halt, and set myself to harangue them for such unsoldierly conduct. But I might as well have talked to a troop of drunken Yahoos. For, some of them grinned in my face like monkeys; others looked as stupid as asses; while the greater part chattered like magpies; each boasted what a clever fellow he was, and what mighty things he could do, yet reeling all the time, and scarcely able to sit his horse. Indeed our guide, a fat jolter-headed fellow, fetching one of his heavy lee lurches, got so far beyond his perpendicular, that he could not right again; but fell off, and came to the ground as helpless as a miller's bag. In short, among my whole corps there was but one sober man, and that was captain Neilson.