es.

We left Lafayette at Williamsburg, which, my readers will remember, is
on the neck of land of which Fort Monroe forms the southeast corner: it
is about twenty-six miles northwest of that post, and ten miles west
of Yorktown. If they do not remember this, they had better learn it
now,--for, on this second of April, the appearances are that they will
need to know it before long. If any one of them does not care to look at
a map, he may take my figure which called Chesapeake Bay the palm of the
hand,--to which the James, York, Rappahannock, and Potomac Rivers are
the four fingers. Lay down on the page your right hand, upon its back,
with the fingers slightly apart. The thumb is a meridian which points
north. The forefinger is the Potomac as far as Washington. The middle
finger is the Rappahannock,--with Fredericksburg about the first joint.
The ring-finger is York River, with Williamsburg and Yorktown just above
and below the knuckle line. The little finger is the James River, as far
as Richmond. Fort Monroe is at the parting of the last two fingers. We
left Lafayette at Williamsburg, disappointed at the failure to entrap
Arnold. He returned at once to Annapolis by water, and transported his
troops back to the head of Chesapeake Bay,--expecting to return to New
York, now that his mission had failed. But Washington had learned,
meanwhile, that General Phillips had been sent from New York to
reinforce Arnold,--and so Lafayette met orders at the head of the
Chesapeake to return, take command in Virginia, and foil the English as
he might. Wayne, in Pennsylvania, was to join him with eight hundred of
the mutinous Pennsylvania line. Were they the grandfathers of the men
who deserted before Bull's Run? They retrieved themselves at James
Island afterwards,--as the Bull's Run Pennsylvanians did at Newbern the
other day. "How Lafayette or Wayne can march without money or credit,"
wrote Washington to Laurens, "is more than I can tell," But he did his
part, which was to command,--and they did theirs, which was to obey.

Lafayette did his part thus. His troops, twelve hundred light infantry,
the best soldiers in the world, he said at the end of the summer, had
left Peekskill for a short expedition only. They had no supplies for a
summer campaign, and seemed likely to desert him. Lafayette issued a
spirited order of the day, in which he took the tone of Henry V. before
the Battle of Agincourt, and offered a pass back to the North R