as without organization or discipline,
most of its officers incompetent to command, its troops altogether
unused to obey, and in the field without enlistment. Their few pieces of
cannon were old and of various sizes, and scarce any one understood
their service. There was no siege-train and no ordnance stores. There
was no military chest, and nothing worthy the name of a _commissariat_.
Yet every one was sure that some bold stroke would be struck, and the
war speedily terminated in victory and independence.

So New York was in the buoyant spirits of a young man rejoicing to run a
race. The armourers, the saddlers, and the smiths were busy day and
night; weapons were in every hand, the look of apprehended triumph on
every face. In June the Van Heemskirk troops were ready to leave for
Boston--nearly six hundred young men, full of pure purpose and brave
thoughts, and with all their illusions and enthusiasms undimmed.

The day before their departure, they escorted Van Heemskirk to his
house. Lysbet and Katherine saw them coming, and fell weeping on each
other's necks--tears that were both joyful and sorrowful, the expression
of mingled love and patriotism and grief. It would have been hard to
find a nobler-looking leader than Joris. Age had but added dignity to
his fine bulk. His large, fair face was serene and confident. And the
bright young lads who followed him looked like his sons, for most of
them strongly resembled him in person; and any one might have been sure,
even if the roll had not shown it, that they were Van Brunts and Van
Ripers and Van Rensselaers, Roosevelts, Westervelts, and Terhunes.

They had a very handsome uniform, and there had been no uncertainty or
dispute about it. Blue, with orange trimmings, carried the question
without one dissenting voice. Blue had been for centuries the colour of
opposition to tyranny. The Scotch Covenanters chose it because the Lord
ordered the children of Israel to wear a ribbon of blue that they might
"look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do
them; and seek not after their own heart and their own eyes, and be holy
unto their God." (Num. xv. 38.) Into their cities of refuge in Holland,
the Covenanters carried their sacred colour; and the Dutch Calvinists
soon blended the blue of their faith with the orange of their
patriotism. Very early in the American struggle, blue became the typical
colour of freedom; and when Van Heemskirk's men chose the blue