It is undoubtedly true that the delay which was produced by the halt of the Royal Army, on the Plain, was the salvation of the American Army, within the lines ; since it afforded time for strengthening the works behind which the latter was, then, posted, and for preparing it for falling back, soon afterwards, and occupying another position, which would be more defensible and not so accessible to the King's troops. But it is scarcely true that, since the morning of the preceding day, the Americans had "drawn back their encampment" and "strengthened their lines by additional works,'' to such an extent, in either instance, that "the designed " attack upon them," on the morning after the engagement, [Tuesday, October 29,] need have been "deferred," for no other reasons than these, notwithstanding General Howe is reported to have informed the Home Government that such had been the case 10 -- the reported withdrawal of the American encampment was, probably, nothing more than the removal of the Stores, back, to the high grounds of Newcastle, which was commenced on that day ; " and, notwithstanding

6 Vide page 202, ante.

'Ibid.

9 In the Return of die Killed, Wounded, and Missing, of the Royal Army, appended to General Howe's despatch to Lord George Germaine, dated "New- York, 3 December, 1776," it was stated that the only one of either of the two Regiments of the Light Dragoons then in America, who was killed, from the nineteenth to the twenty-eighth of October, inclusive, was one Rank and File, of the Seventeenth Regiment ; and, very probably, that one was the same to whom we have referred, in the text.