But as the hand advanced, the packet retreated. “My orders,” said young Prentiss, drily, “are that these dispatches be delivered into General Putnam’s hands only.”

There were several other officers seated about the room transacting headquarters business;[45] at the young man’s words they looked up, surprised. Major Hyde sprang to his feet, his eyes snapping with anger.

[45]

“What do you mean?” cried he. “You’ll do as I bid you. Don’t forget that! I am your superior officer.”

“I am aware that you are,” replied the young man, “but my orders from General Washington are unmistakable, sir. And he is your superior officer.”

For a moment Hyde remained standing with rage; then he sat down abruptly and rapped upon the table for an orderly.

“Dispatches from Boston for General Putnam,” said he shortly. “Tell him so.”

George stood back and awaited the soldier’s return; and as he waited he could not help wondering at his odd experience in New York.

“I have been on shore but a bare hour—scarcely that long—and I have met with nothing but affronts and rebuffs,” he said to the young ensign who sat in a window overlooking Broadway. “I can’t understand the attitude of the colonists here. At Boston, one has but to be a patriot to meet with consideration.[46] But in New York, apparently, it makes little difference what your sympathies; you have but to be a stranger to be marked for insolence.”

[46]

“New York,” said the ensign, who seemed a person of some intelligence, “is very different from Boston—from my own city, Philadelphia, or from any other place in the colonies, for the matter of that. It was settled by mixed races—Dutch, Huguenots, English and Scotch. Their interests, desires and ideals have been different from the beginning. They have become so accustomed to facing each other down and sneering at each other’s social peculiarities that it has, so it seems, grown to be a part of their deportment.”

Here the speaker was about to plunge into an elaborate discourse upon this subject, but George was saved from listening by the orderly reappearing from an inner room and beckoning him forward.

“The general will see you,” said he.

In another moment the young 

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