r General Burgoyne, had been marching south from Canada, along the
line of Lake Champlain and Lake George. But Burgoyne and his men soon
found themselves in a tight place. Food began to run short and a
regiment of a thousand men was sent into Vermont to seize some stores.
They were met by the Green Mountain boys, led by Colonel Stark, a brave
old soldier.

"There are the red-coats," said the bold colonel. "We must beat them
to-day, or Molly Stark is a widow."[1]

Beat them they did. Only seventy men got back to Burgoyne. All the rest
were killed or captured.

Another force, under Colonel St. Leger, marched south from Oswego, on
Lake Ontario. A large body of Indians was with him. This army stopped to
besiege a fort in the wilderness, and General Arnold marched to help the
fort.

The way Arnold defeated St. Leger was a very curious one. He sent a
half-witted fellow into the Indian camp with the tale that a great
American force was coming. The messenger came running in among the
savages, with bullet-holes in his clothes. He seemed half scared to
death, and told the Indians that a vast host was coming after him as
thick as the leaves on the trees.

This story frightened the Indians and they ran off in great haste
through the woods. When the British soldiers saw this they fell into
such a terror that they took to their heels, leaving all their tents and
cannon behind them. The people in the fort did not know what it meant,
till Arnold came up and told them how he had won a victory without
firing a shot, by a sort of fairy story.

All this was very bad for Burgoyne. The Indians he brought with him
began to leave. At length he found himself in a terrible plight. His
provisions were nearly gone, he was surrounded by the Americans, and
after fighting two battles he retreated to Saratoga. Here he had to
surrender. He and all his army became prisoners to the Americans.

We cannot wonder that this warmed up the Americans like a fire. It
filled the English with despair. They began to think that they would
never win back the colonies.

One thing the good news did was to get the French to come to the help of
the Americans. Benjamin Franklin was then in Paris, and he asked the
king to send ships and men and money to America. The French had no love
for the British, who had taken from them all their colonies in America,
so they did as Franklin wished.

There are two more things I wish to tell you in this chapter, one good
and