ts of
the men, and in other material ways in the camp. Some of the clothing,
some of the guns from the Mellish, some of the material captured from
the Hessians had gone into the hands and over the backs and upon the
feet of the men. But the clothed and the naked were equally happy, for
had they not done something at last? Ay! they had given assurance that
they were men to be reckoned with.

Fired by the example set them by the Continentals, the Pennsylvania
militia, under Cadwalader and Ewing and Mifflin, had at last crossed
the Delaware and joined Griffin's men. Washington had followed them,
and the twenty-ninth of December found him established in new
headquarters at Trenton. A number of mounds in the fields, covered
with snow, some bitter recollections and sad stories of plunder,
robbery, rapine, and worse, told with gnashing teeth or breaking heart
by the firesides, were all that remained of their strange antagonists
in the town. But the little town and the little valley were to be once
more the scene of war. The great game was to be played again, and the
little creek of the Assunpink was to run red under its ice and between
its banks.

On the twenty-ninth, Washington's troops began to cross the river
again. Two parties of light dragoons were sent on in advance under
Colonel Reed, assisted by parties of Pennsylvania riflemen despatched
by Cadwalader. They clung tenaciously to the flanks of Von Donop.
That unfortunate commander had been led away from his camp at
Burlington in pursuit of Griffin's gallant six hundred. When he
returned, unsuccessful, the news from Trenton had so alarmed him that
he fled precipitately, abandoning his heavy baggage and some of his
artillery. It was a work of joy for the pursued to pursue, a reversal
of conditions which put the heavy German veterans at a strange
disadvantage compared with their alert and active pursuers. They had
marched through that country with a high hand, plundering and abusing
its inhabitants in a frightful way, and they were now being made to
experience the hatred they themselves had enkindled. The country
people rose against them, and cut them off without mercy.

It took two days to get the troops across, on account of the ice in the
river. And now came another difficulty. The time of the major part of
the Americans had expired on the last day of the year, but Washington
had them paraded and had ridden up and addressed them in a brilliant,
soldie