who had first set foot in America at Louisbourg, as
a king's officer, and who now resided beyond Kingsbridge.

It was under Montgomery that Philip Winwood took service, enlisting as
a private soldier, but soon revealing such knowledge of military
matters that he was speedily, in the off-hand manner characteristic of
improvised armies, made a lieutenant. This was a little strange,
seeing that there was a mighty scramble for commissions, nine out of
every ten patriots, however raw, clamouring to be officers; and it
shows that sometimes (though 'tis not often) modest merit will win as
well as self-assertive incompetence. Philip had obtained his
acquaintance with military forms from books; he was, in his ability to
assimilate the matter of a book, an exception among men; and a still
greater exception in his ability to apply that matter practically.
Indeed, it sometimes seemed that he could get out of a book not only
all that was in it, but more than was in it. Many will not believe
what I have related of him, that he had actually learned the rudiments
of fencing, the soldier's manual of arms, the routine of camp and
march, and such things, from reading; but it is a fact: just as it is
true that Greene, the best general of the rebels after Washington,
learned military law, routine, tactics, and strategy, from books he
read at the fire of the forge where he worked as blacksmith; and that
the men whom he led to Cambridge, from Rhode Island, were the best
disciplined, equipped, uniformed, and maintained, of the whole Yankee
army at that time. As for Philip's gift of translating printed matter
into actuality, I remember how, when we afterward came to visit
strange cities together, he would find his way about without a
question, like an old resident, through having merely read
descriptions of the places.

But rank did not come unsought, or otherwise, to Philip's fellow
volunteer from the Faringfield house, Mr. Cornelius. The pedagogue,
with little to say on the subject, took the rebel side as a matter of
course, Presbyterians being, it seems, republican in their nature. He
went as a private in the same company with Philip.

It was planned that the rebel troops of New York province should
invade Canada by way of Lake George, while the army under Washington
continued the siege of Boston. Philip went through the form of
arranging that his wife should remain at her father's house--the only
suitable home for her, indeed--during his