I
The time was the year of grace 1779; the locality, Morristown, New
Jersey.
It was bitterly cold. A northeasterly wind had been stiffening the
mud of the morning\'s thaw into a rigid record of that day\'s wayfaring on
the Baskingridge road. The hoof-prints of cavalry, the deep ruts left by
baggage-wagons, and the deeper channels worn by artillery, lay stark and
cold in the waning light of an April day. There were icicles on the fences,
a rime of silver on the windward bark of maples, and occasional bare spots
on the rocky protuberances of the road, as if Nature had worn herself out
at the knees and elbows through long waiting for the tardy spring. A few
leaves disinterred by the thaw became crisp again, and rustled in the wind,
making the summer a thing so remote that all human hope and conjecture
fled before them.