Chapter 10 - Page 2

housekeeper.

The battle of the Plains had taught the cautious Washington the
advantages his enemy possessed in organization, arms, and discipline.
These were difficulties to be mastered by his own vigilance and care.
Drawing off his troops to the heights, in the northern part of the
county, he had bidden defiance to the attacks of the royal army, and Sir
William Howe fell back to the enjoyment of his barren conquest--a
deserted city. Never afterwards did the opposing armies make the trial
of strength within the limits of Westchester; yet hardly a day passed,
that the partisans did not make their inroads; or a sun rise, that the
inhabitants were spared the relation of excesses which the preceding
darkness had served to conceal. Most of the movements of the peddler
were made at the hours which others allotted to repose. The evening sun
would frequently leave him at one extremity of the county, and the
morning find him at the other. His pack was his never-failing companion;
and there were those who closely studied him, in his moments of traffic,
and thought his only purpose was the accumulation of gold. He would be
often seen near the Highlands, with a body bending under its load; and
again near the Harlem River, traveling with lighter steps, with his face
towards the setting sun. But these glances at him were uncertain and
fleeting. The intermediate time no eye could penetrate. For months he
disappeared, and no traces of his course were ever known.

Strong parties held the heights of Harlem, and the northern end of
Manhattan Island was bristling with the bayonets of the English
sentinels, yet the peddler glided among them unnoticed and uninjured.
His approaches to the American lines were also frequent; but generally
so conducted as to baffle pursuit. Many a sentinel, placed in the gorges
of the mountains, spoke of a strange figure that had been seen gliding
by them in the mists of the evening. These stories reached the ears of
the officers, and, as we have related, in two instances the trader had
fallen into the hands of the Americans. The first time he had escaped
from Lawton, shortly after his arrest; but the second he was condemned
to die. On the morning of his intended execution, the cage was opened,
but the bird had flown. This extraordinary escape had been made from the
custody of a favorite officer of Washington, and sentinels who had been
thought worthy to guard the person of the commander in chief. Bribery
and treason could not be imputed to men so well esteemed, and the
opinion gained ground among the common soldiery, that the peddler had
dealings with the dark one. Katy, however, always repelled this opinion
with indignation; for within the recesses of her own bosom, the
housekeeper, in