Thompson had 80 or 100 snow shoes, and was urged either to put them on his men and move against the enemy, or to fall hack upon the relief guard, or draw his forces within the house ; but he declined to adopt any of these suggestions and drew up his troops in front and on the right of the house towards Hammond's. Capt. Roberts being mortally wounded at the first .fire, and the Americans yielding to superior force, Thompson ordered a retreat, and was moving off northerly when about a quarter of a mile from the house his horse was killed on or near the road leading to the upper Four Corners and he was taken prisoner. It appears that Capt. Roberts predicted his death shortly before the attack, observing, " My grandfather was killed in the old French war and 1 shall be killed in this."

This was a serious reverse for the American arms, the lines being pushed hack at that time towards the Croton River. Some impor-

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the youngs house affair.

taut officers had been stationed there, including General Kosciusko and Col. Aaron Burr. The Youngs house was not rebuilt, but there will always linger about it the memory of the tragedies there enacted.

, There was a spring of water nearly opposite Youngs', on the east side of and in the road, where many of the wounded crawled for water and died. The late Rev. Alexander Van Wart, son of Isaac, one of the captors, who afterwards owned the Youngs place, described the somewhat elevated sandy field just north of the Corners, on the east side of the Unionville road, as the place where some thirteen Americans and three British soldiers who fell in that fight were buried ; "and," he added, "I have ploughed many a furrow over their graves."