She at least did not discourage this devotion, and it has even been surmised that she reciprocated it; and the companion of her loneliness, Miss Williams, apparently regarded the romantic affair with a kindly interest. The ardent Colonel Gist, during his occasional warlike employments below the lines, made his rendezvous at the foot of Wild Boar Hill, opposite the parsonage; and here, with his light corps, he was surprised early one morning by a formidable force of the enemy. A careful plan had been laid by Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe, of the Queen's Rangers, to surround and capture his whole command. In this enterprise Simcoe had the co-operation of Tarleton, Emmerick, and other able officers. The accompanying map shows how the different corps of the enemy were to have been disposed, and actually were disposed, with the single important exception of a detachment that was to have been stationed north of the Nepperhan River for the purpose of cutting off (list's retreat that way. But owing to some blunder this line of retreat was left open. The attacking force surprised Cist's men according to programme, and gave them a sharp fire; but the latter, led by the colonel, escaped across the Nepperhan and were soon beyond pursuit. "In the meantime," says a narrator of the affair,

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

"Mrs. Babcock, having stationed herself in one of the dormer windows of the parsonage, aided their escape, wherever they appeared, by the waving of a white handkerchief." Our salutations to the shade of the gentle, gracious, and (we doubt not) beauteous Mrs. Babcock! During the years 1777 and 1778 a very useful " whaleboat " service was organized and developed in the hamlets of our county along the Sound. The whaleboats, propelled with oars, "would dart across the Sound under cover of the night, and run into the inlets of the Long Island shore, landing near the house of a Tory family, sometimes to plunder and sometimes to take prisoners.