Chapter 4 A
TRYSTAbove the White Plains the territory was supposed to be our own.
Below, seventeen thousand red-coats held the city of New York; and
their partisans, irregulars, militia, refugee-corps, and
Legion-horsemen, harried the lines. Yet, except the enemy's
cruisers which sometimes strayed far up the Hudson, like impudent
hawks circling within the very home-yard, we saw nothing of red-rag
or leather-cap north of our lines, save only once, when
Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe nearly caught us.
His Excellency's army lay in position all around us, now, from
West Point down the river; and our light-horsemen patrolled as far
south as the unhappy country from which we had retired through the
smoke of Bedford's burning farms and the blaze of church and manor
at Poundridge. That hil
