s carried back, and Knyphausen took his place.

This delayed the march until sunrise, and gave time for the troops of
the Jersey line, under Colonel Elias Dayton, stationed in
Elizabethtown, to assemble. They were too weak in numbers, however, to
withstand the enemy, but retreated in good order, skirmishing
occasionally. Signal guns and signal fires were rousing the country.
The militia and yeomanry armed themselves with such weapons as were at
hand, and hastened to their alarm posts. The enemy took the old road,
by what was called Galloping Hill, towards the village of Connecticut
Farms; fired upon from behind walls and thickets by the hasty levies
of the country.

At Connecticut Farms, the retreating troops under Dayton fell in with
the Jersey brigade, under General Maxwell, and a few militia joining
them, the Americans were enabled to make some stand, and even to hold
the enemy in check. The latter, however, brought up several field
pieces, and being reinforced by a second division which had crossed
from Staten Island some time after the first, compelled the Americans
again to retreat. Some of the enemy, exasperated at the unexpected
opposition they had met with throughout their march, and pretending
that the inhabitants of this village had fired upon them from their
windows, began to pillage and set fire to the houses.{1}

{Footnote 1: [The wife of the Rev. James Caldwell, already alluded to,
was in the village at the time, and while sitting on the side of a
bed, holding a child by the hand, a musket was discharged in at the
window, and the ball striking her in the breast, she fell dead on the
floor.]}

In the meantime Knyphausen was pressing on with his main force towards
Morristown. The booming of alarm guns had roused the country; every
valley was pouring out its yeomanry. Two thousand were said to be
already in arms below the mountains. Within half a mile of
Springfield, Knyphausen halted to reconnoitre. That village, through
which passes the road to Springfield, had been made the American
rallying-point. It stands at the foot of what are called the Short
Hills, on the west side of Rahway River, which runs in front of it. On
the bank of the river, General Maxwell's Jersey brigade and the
militia of the neighborhood were drawn up to dispute the passage.
Washington had arrived and taken his position that afternoon, prepared
to withstand an encounter though not to seek one. All night his camp
fires lighted up