Americans fight Englishmen, it is Greek meeting Greek. Clinton tells me the rebels have taken four thousand pounds' worth of ordnance and stores and nearly seven hundred prisoners. Oh, you know a deed like this makes even an enemy proud of the men who could do it!"

"Was it a very difficult deed?" asked Maria.

"I am told that Stony Point is a rock two hundred feet high, surrounded by the Hudson River on three sides, and almost isolated from the land on the fourth side by a marsh, which at high tide is two feet underwater. They reached the fort about midnight, and while one column drew the defenders to the front by a rapid continuous fire, two other columns, armed only with the bayonet, broke into the fort from opposite points. In five minutes the rebels were rushing through every embrasure, and a thousand tongues crying 'Victory'! There is no use belittling such an affair. It was as brave a thing as ever men did, and I wish I had seen the doing of it."

In such conversation they passed up Maiden Lane, and by the ruins of Trinity Church to the riverside; all of them influenced by the tense feeling which found no vocal outlet for its passion. Men and women would appear for a moment at a window, and then disappear. They were American patriots on the lookout to spread the good news. A flash from the lifted eyes of Agnes was sufficient. Again they would meet two or three royalists talking in a dejected, disparaging way of the victory; or else blustering in anger over the supineness or inefficiency of their generals.

"I hope General Clinton will now find his soldiers some tougher work than hay-making," sneered an irate old man who stopped Lord Medway. "If he goes out hay-making, he ought to leave fighting men in the forts. Why the commander at Stony Point--Colonel Johnson--I know him, had a wine party, and the officers from Verplanck's Point were drinking with him when Wayne walked into their midst and made them all prisoners. I am told the sentinels had been secured, the abatis removed, and the rebels in the works before our fine soldiers knew an enemy was near. And it was that tanner from Pennsylvania--that Dandy Wayne, that stole the march on them! It makes me ashamed of our English troops, my lord!""Well, Mr. Smith, General Clinton will be in New York in a few days. There will be many to call him to account, I have no doubt."

In this electric atmosphere heart spoke to heart very readily, for in the midst of great realities conventionalities are of so little consequence, and genuine feeling, of any kind, forgets, or 

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