damn wicked thing to
do--which there ain't no mistake."

They had come to wagon roads improving as they approached towns and
villages, in the first of which they began selling the drove. When
they reached Boston, nearly a week later, they had only the two horses
which they rode.

The trial had just begun. Being ardent Whigs, their testimony made an
impression. Jack's letter to his father says that Mr. Adams
complimented them when they left the stand.

There is an old letter of Solomon Binkus which briefly describes the
journey. He speaks of the "pompy" men who examined them. "They
grinned at me all the time an' the ol' big wig Jedge in the womern's
dress got mad if I tried to crack a joke," he wrote in his letter. "He
looked like he had paid too much fer his whistle an' thought I had sold
it to him. Thought he were goin' to box my ears. John Addums is
erbout as sharp as a razor. Took a likin' to Jack an' me. I tol' him
he were smart 'nough to be a trapper."

The two came back in the saddle and reached Albany late in October.

CHAPTER III

THE JOURNEY TO PHILADELPHIA

The _New York Mercury_ of November 4, 1770, contains this item:

"John Irons, Jr., and Solomon Binkus, the famous scout, arrived
Wednesday morning on the schooner _Ariel_ from Albany. Mr. Binkus is
on his way to Alexandria, Virginia, where he is to meet Major
Washington and accompany him to the Great Kanawha River in the Far
West."

Solomon was soon to meet an officer with whom he was to find the
amplest scope for his talents. Jack was on his way to Philadelphia.
They had found the ship crowded and Jack and two other boys "pigged
together"--in the expressive phrase of that time--on the cabin floor,
through the two nights of their journey. Jack minded not the hardness
of the floor, but there was much drinking and arguing and expounding of
the common law in the forward end of the cabin, which often interrupted
his slumbers.

He was overawed by the length and number of the crowded streets of New
York and by "the great height" of many of its buildings. The grandeur
of Broadway and the fashionable folk who frequented it was the subject
of a long letter which he indited to his mother from The City Tavern.

He took the boat to Amboy as Benjamin Franklin had done, but without
mishap, and thence traveled by stage to Burlington. There he met Mr.
John Adams of Boston, who was on his way to Philadelphia. He was a
full-faced, ruddy,