so far from the troops, and so near the enemy that they were obliged to be constantly on the alert. We had three different houses that we occupied alternately, during the night; the first was an empty house, the second the parson's house, and the third a farmer's house; we had to remove from one to the other of these houses three times every night, from fear of being surprised by the enemy. There was no trusting the inhabitants, for many of them were friendly to the British, and we did not know who were or who were not, and consequently, were distrustful of them all, unless it were one or two. The parson was a staunch whig, as the friends to the country were called in those times, and the farmer, mentioned before, was another, and perhaps more that we were not acquainted with; be that as it would, we were shy of trusting them. Here, especially in the night, we were obliged to keep about one half of the guard upon sentry, and besides these, small patroling parties on all the roads leading towards the enemy; but with all the vigilance we could exercise, we could hardly escape being surprised and cut off by the enemy; they exerted themselves more than common, to take some of our guards, because we had challenged them to do it, and had bid them defiance.
I was once upon this guard, it was in the spring, after the snow had gone off the ground; myself and another young man took for our tour of duty to patrol upon a certain road during the night. About midnight or a little after, our guard being then at the farmer's house, which was the farthest back from the water's side of any of the houses we occupied; this distance caused some of our sentinels to be three miles from the guard. We patroled from the guard to the farthest sentries which, were two, (or in military phrase, a double sentinel,) who were standing upon a bridge. After we had visited these sentinels and were returning, we passed the parson's house; there was a muddy plash in the road nearly opposite the house, and as it happened, the man with me passed on the side next to the house, and I passed on the other; after we had got clear of the water and had come together again, he told me there were British soldiers lying in the garden and door yard; I asked him if he was sure of it, he said he was, for, said he, "I was near enough to have reached them with my hand, had there been no fence between."
