The hidden children, [Hardcover]

Robert W Chambers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1914

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV A TRYST Above the White Plains the territory was supposed to be our own. Below, seventeen thousand red-coats held the city of New York; and their partisans, irregulars, militia, refugee-corps, and Legion-horsemen, harried the lines. Yet, except the enemy's cruisers which sometimes strayed far up the Hudson, like impudent hawks circling within the very home-yard, we saw nothing of red-rag or leather-cap north of our lines, save only once, when Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe nearly caught us. His Excellency's army lay in position all around us, now, from West Point down the river; and our light- horsemen patrolled as far south as the unhappy country from which we had retired through the smoke of Bedford's burning farms and the blaze of church and manor at Poundridge. That hilly strip was then our southern frontier, bravely defended by Thomas and Lockwood, shamefully neglected by Sheldon, as we had seen. For which he was broke, poor devil, and a better man set there to watch the red fox Tarleton, to harry Emmerick, and to throw the fear o' God into that headlong blockhead, Simcoe, a brave man, but so possessed by hatred for "Mr." Washington that every move he made was like a goaded bull—his halts merely the bewilderment of baffled fury, his charges blind and bellowing. I know how he conducted, not from hearsay alone, but because at sunrise on our second day northward, before we struck the river-road, we had like to have had a brush with him, his flankers running afoul of us not far beyond a fortified post heavily held by our Continentals. It was the glimpse of cannon and levelled bayonets that bewildered him; and his bawling charge sheered wide o' the shabby Continental battle-line, through which we galloped into safety, our Indian sticking to my crupper like a ...

Product Details

• Hardcover: 651 pages
• Publisher: D. Appleton and Co; First Edition edition (1914)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00085I3H4
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,375,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)