He leaps from the field to the farmhouse, seizes the trusty musket, already charged, from the hooks over the mantle shelf, and the precious powder and ball from the closet near by ; and snatching a kiss from lips of loved wife and babes, whom he may never see again, he goes bounding away northward over hill and dale, to the chosen, natural place of rendezvous, -- a little cliff, which juts orrt from the ridge and about whose very base winds the valley road, down which the retiring foe must come. In the bushes along the verge, with his gathering comrades, he hides and waits. vSee, how closely they crouch to the very soil, in whose defence they are" about to risk their lives.
Note, with what ardent glance they search the upper bend of the road, round which the swelling turmoil above tells that the enemy must soon come- Not long have they to wait ; for soon round that upper bend the vanguard appears, stretching from wall to. wall ; and close behind it the struggling, surging mass of frantic cattle, that early morning stolen from patriot farms above ; and then the rear guard, with serried ranks and steady, though quickening tread, British Regulars or Delancey's famous rangers, for craven cowboy would long since have taken to the woods in abject flight. Behind, scarcely a dozen rods away, press the patriot farmers of the upper valley, sending thick and fast their avenging
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MONUMENT DEDICATION.