The Rangers

紂The Rangers, By D. P. Thompson

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Title: The Rangers [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter]
Author: D. P. Thompson
Release Date: November 2004 [EBook #6947] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 16, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE RANGERS
OR
THE TORY'S DAUGHTER
A TALE
ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE
REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF VERMONT
AND THE
NORTHERN CAMPAIGN OF 1777
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS"
TWO VOLUMES IN ONE
TENTH EDITION

VOLUME I.

On commencing his former work, illustrative of the revolutionary history of Vermont,--THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS,--it was the design of the author to have embraced the battle of Bennington, and other events of historic interest which occurred in the older and more southerly parts of the state; but finding, as he proceeded, that the unity and interest of his effort would be endangered by embracing so much ground, a part of the original design was relinquished, or rather its execution was deferred for a new and separate work, wherein better justice could be done to the rich and unappropriated materials of which his researches had put him in possession. That work, after an interval of ten years, and the writing and publishing of several intermediate ones, is now presented to the public, and with the single remark, that if it is made to possess less interest, as a mere tale, than its predecessor, the excuse must be found in the author's greater anxiety to give a true historic version of the interesting and important events he has undertaken to illustrate.

THE RANGERS;
OR,
THE TORY'S DAUGHTER
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
.
"Sing on! sing on! my mountain home, The paths where erst I used to roam, The thundering torrent lost in foam. The snow-hill side all bathed in light,-- All, all are bursting on my sight!"

Towards night, on the twelfth of March, 1775, a richly-equipped double sleigh, filled with a goodly company of well-dressed persons of the different sexes, was seen descending from the eastern side of the Green Mountains, along what may now be considered the principal thoroughfare leading from the upper navigable portions of the Hudson to those of the Connecticut River. The progress of the travellers was not only slow, but extremely toilsome, as was plainly evinced by the appearance of the reeking and jaded horses, as they labored and floundered along the sloppy and slumping snow paths of the winter road, which was obviously now fast resolving itself into the element of which it was composed. Up to the previous evening, the dreary reign of winter had continued wholly uninterrupted by the advent of his more gentle successor in the changing rounds of the seasons; and the snowy waste which enveloped the earth would, that morning, have apparently withstood the rains and suns of months before yielding entirely to their influences. But during the night there had occurred one of those great and sudden transitions from cold to heat, which can only be experienced in northern climes, and which can be accounted for only on the supposition, that the earth, at stated intervals, rapidly gives out large quantities of its internal heats, or that the air becomes suddenly rarefied by some essential change or modification in the state of the electric fluid. The morning had been cloudless; and the rising sun, with rays no longer dimly struggling through the dense, obstructing medium of the dark months gone by, but, with the restored beams of his natural brightness, fell upon the smoking earth with the genial warmth of summer. A new atmosphere, indeed, seemed to have been suddenly created, so warm and bland was the whole air; while, occasionally, a breeze came over the face of the traveller, which seemed like the breath of a heated oven. As the day advanced, the sky gradually became overcast--a strong south wind sprung up, before whose warm puffs the drifted snow-banks seemed