The Rangers

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
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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