Van Rensselaer’s troops were scarcely gone when we heard more drums to the southward; and before that steamy hot morning was over, the grassy plain around Fort Edward was a city of tents of every size and color. Ox carts, piled high with supplies, creaked up the road in a slow procession. Within the fort itself a marquee had been erected, and into it and out from it scuttled officers and aides, all in a tremendous hurry. Despatch bearers freed their horses from the near-by picket line to go pelting off in a lather. From time to time a tall, blue-clad officer with a long inquisitive nose stalked from the tent and seemed to smile defiantly at everything in sight. Wherever he moved, two aides moved with him, one at each elbow. They held note-books in readiness to take down whatever word should fall from the great man’s lips, the reason being that he was Philip Schuyler, Commander of the Northern Army of the United States. On learning of our retreat from Ticonderoga, he had snatched up every available man on whom he could lay hand, and hurried north from Albany with seven hundred Continentals and fourteen hundred militia to do what he could to stop the victorious advance of the British. It was a pitifully ill-trained, illequipped body of men with which to confront the flower of the British army; and yet to the use he made of that forlorn hope of his, and to the brilliancy and bravery of his friend General Arnold, we owe our existence as a nation.