He is cogitating a little plot to himself.
It seems that the good officer--not more true to the king his master than indulgent towards the prisoner which that same loyalty made--had left orders that Israel should be supplied with whatever liquor he wanted that night.

So, calling for the can again and again, Israel invites the two soldiers to drink and be merry.

At length, a wag of the company proposes that Israel should entertain the public with a jig, he (the wag) having heard that the Yankees were extraordinary dancers.

A fiddle is brought in, and poor Israel takes the floor.

Not a little cut to think that these people should so unfeelingly seek to be diverted at the expense of an unfortunate prisoner, Israel, while jigging it up and down, still conspires away at his private plot, resolving ere long to give the enemy a touch of certain Yankee steps, as yet undreamed of in their simple philosophy.