We left Lafayette at Williamsburg, which, my readers will remember, is on the neck of land of which Fort Monroe forms the southeast corner:  it is about twenty-six miles northwest of that post, and ten miles west of Yorktown.  If they do not remember this, they had better learn it now,—­for, on this second of April, the appearances are that they will need to know it before long.  If any one of them does not care to look at a map, he may take my figure which called Chesapeake Bay the palm of the hand,—­to which the James, York, Rappahannock, and Potomac Rivers are the four fingers.  Lay down on the page your right hand, upon its back, with the fingers slightly apart.  The thumb is a meridian which points north.  The forefinger is the Potomac as far as Washington.  The middle finger is the Rappahannock,—­with Fredericksburg about the first joint.  The ring-finger is York River, with Williamsburg and Yorktown just above and below the knuckle line.  The little finger is the James River, as far as Richmond.  Fort Monroe is at the parting of the last two fingers.  We left Lafayette at Williamsburg, disappointed at the failure to entrap Arnold.  He returned at once to Annapolis by water, and transported his troops back to the head of Chesapeake Bay,—­expecting to return to New York, now that his mission had failed.  But Washington had learned, meanwhile, that General Phillips had been sent from New York to reinforce Arnold,—­and so Lafayette met orders at the head of the Chesapeake to return, take command in Virginia, and foil the English as he might.  Wayne, in Pennsylvania, was to join him with eight hundred of the mutinous Pennsylvania line.  Were they the grandfathers of the men who deserted before Bull’s Run?  They retrieved themselves at James Island afterwards,—­as the Bull’s Run Pennsylvanians did at Newbern the other day.  “How Lafayette or Wayne can march without money or credit,” wrote Washington to Laurens, “is more than I can tell,” But he did his part, which was to command,—­and they did theirs, which was to obey.

Lafayette did his part thus.  His troops, twelve hundred light infantry, the best soldiers in the world, he said at the end of the summer, had left Peekskill for a short expedition only.  They had no supplies for a summer campaign, and seemed likely to desert him.  Lafayette issued a spirited order of the day, in which he took the tone of Henry V. before the Battle of Agincourt, and offered a pass back to the North River to any man who did not dare share with him the perils of the summer against a superior force.  He also hanged one deserter whom he caught after this order, and pardoned another who was less to blame.  By such varied means he so far “encouraged the rest” that he wholly stopped desertion.  He crossed the Susquehanna on the 13th of April, was in Baltimore on the 18th, and it was here that the ladies gave him the ball where he said, “My soldiers have no shirts.”  He borrowed two thousand guineas on his own personal security, promising