And then, as the heat of August gave way to the clear days and frosty nights of September, the countryside took on new life. Wherever we went we passed men with muskets on their shoulders, trudging along toward some far destination. They had water-flasks in the pockets of their weskits: blankets over their shoulders: little sacks of corn meal tied to their belts. When we asked them where they were going, they invariably answered, “Agin Burgine.” They seemed surprised to be asked, as if everybody ought to know where they were going, and why—ought to be aware that nobody in his right mind was going anywhere except against Burgoyne.

They traveled in groups, or singly, or in twos and threes. Small groups joined larger ones and continued onward together. Once, watching six countrymen straggle past a crossroad farm house, their muskets all skewgee, we saw a boy burst from the farm house carrying a musket twice as long as himself—a boy with enough freckles for ten boys. An old green overcoat was tied around his waist by the arms. A woman stood in the farm house door and watched him go.

He ran along behind the six stragglers, worrying a tin whistle from his pocket. His musket troubled him, but still he contrived to put his whistle to his lips and tootle a jig tune that had a swing to it, and was a masterpiece of shrillness. One of the six men took the boy’s musket, and the rest got themselves into a sort of line, shouldered their muskets, and went trudging to the westward a little faster, with bucolic guffaws at their sudden military air.

As we went farther west ourselves, the groups became larger. When we rode at night, eager to be back with our friends again, we saw fires in the fields, with men asleep around them. In villages we began to encounter companies drilling. The groups along the roads, even, were drilling; and we became more and more conscious of the sound of drums: solitary drums at first: then two or three drums together at the head of a company: then drums and fifes.

We began to have the feeling that the whole country was on the move, drifting to the westward, toward the Hudson, “agin Burgine.”

When we reached Bennington, Schuyler had said, our work would be done and we could come back; so it was with profound relief, on the thirty-fifth day of our travels, that we rode into that hilly little town.

Our relief was not long-lived; for women were talking in farmyards, standing on doorsteps, hanging from windows, talking and talking, and staring toward the westward.