CHAPTER VIII.

I Meet an Old Friend in the Dark.

I shall not give an account of my military service, since it entered little into the history of Philip Winwood.  ’Twas our duty to help man the outposts that guarded the island at whose Southern extremity New York lies, from rebel attack; especially from the harassments of the partisan troops, and irregular Whiggery, who would swoop down in raiding parties, cut off our foragers, drive back our wood-cutters, and annoy us in a thousand ways.  We had such raiders of our own, too, notably Captain James De Lancey’s Westchester Light Horse, Simcoe’s Rangers, and the Hessian yagers, who repaid the visits of our enemies by swift forays across the neutral ground between the two armies.

But this warfare did not exist in its fulness till later, when the American army formed about us an immense segment of a circle, which began in New Jersey, ran across Westchester County in New York province, and passed through a corner of Connecticut to Long Island Sound.  On our side, we occupied Staten Island, part of the New Jersey shore, our own island, lower Westchester County, and that portion of Long Island nearest New York.  But meanwhile, the rebel main army was in New Jersey in the Winter of 1776-77, surprising some of our Hessians at Trenton, overcoming a British force at Princeton, and going into quarters at Morristown.  And in the next year, Sir William Howe having sailed to take Philadelphia with most of the king’s regulars (leaving General Clinton to hold New York with some royal troops and us loyalists), the fighting was around the rebel capital, which the British, after two victories, held during the Winter of 1777-78, while Washington camped at Valley Forge.

In the Fall of 1777, we thought we might have news of Winwood, for in the Northern rebel army to which General Burgoyne then capitulated, there were not only many New York troops, but moreover several of the officers taken at Quebec, who had been exchanged when Philip had.  But of him we heard nothing, and from him it was not likely that we should hear.  Margaret never mentioned him now, and seemed to have forgotten that she possessed a husband.  Her interest was mainly in the British officers still left in New York, and her impatience was for the return of the larger number that had gone to Philadelphia.  To this impatience an end was put in the Summer of 1778, when the main army marched back to us across New Jersey, followed part way by the rebels, and fighting with them at Monmouth Court House.  ’Twas upon this that the lines I have mentioned, of British outposts protecting New York, and rebel forces surrounding us on all sides but that of the sea, were established in their most complete shape; and that the reciprocal forays became most frequent.