As some way-worn pilgrim, when the tempest whistles through his locks, and night is gathering round, beholds his faithful dog, the companion and solace of his journeying, stretched lifeless at his feet, so did the generous-hearted hero of the Manhattoes contemplate the untimely end of Antony Van Corlear.  He had been the faithful attendant of his footsteps; he had charmed him in many a weary hour by his honest gayety and the martial melody of his trumpet, and had followed him with unflinching loyalty and affection through many a scene of direful peril and mishap.  He was gone for ever! and that, too, at a moment when every mongrel cur was skulking from his side.  This, Peter Stuyvesant, was the moment to try thy fortitude; and this was the moment when thou didst indeed shine forth—­Peter the Headstrong!

The glare of day had long dispelled the horrors of the stormy night; still all was dull and gloomy.  The late jovial Apollo hid his face behind lugubrious clouds, peeping out now and then for an instant, as if anxious, yet fearful, to see what was going on in his favorite city.  This was the eventful morning when the Great Peter was to give his reply to the summons of the invaders.  Already was he closeted with his privy council, sitting in grim state, brooding over the fate of his favorite trumpeter, and anon boiling with indignation as the insolence of his recreant burgomasters flashed upon his mind.  While in this state of irritation, a courier arrived in all haste from Winthrop, the subtle governor of Connecticut, counseling him, in the most affectionate and disinterested manner, to surrender the province, and magnifying the dangers and calamities to which a refusal would subject him.  What a moment was this to intrude officious advice upon a man who never took advice in his whole life!  The fiery old governor strode up and down the chamber with a vehemence that made the bosoms of his councillors to quake with awe; railing at his unlucky fate, that thus made him the constant butt of factious subjects and jesuitical advisers.

Just at this ill-chosen juncture the officious burgomasters, who had heard of the arrival of mysterious despatches, came marching in a body into the room, with a legion of schepens and toad-eaters at their heels, and abruptly demanded a perusal of the letter.  This was too much for the spleen of Peter Stuyvesant.  He tore the letter in a thousand pieces—­threw it in the face of the nearest burgomaster—­broke his pipe over the head of the next—­hurled his spitting-box at an unlucky schepen, who was just retreating out at the door; and finally prorogued the whole meeting sine die, by kicking them downstairs with his wooden leg.