She is standing before the doorway of a great country house, smiling and beckoning welcome, and at the invitation officers on horseback halt the column of rapidly moving men.

The soldiers break ranks and throw themselves down in the shade of the trees.

The officers advance bowing, and enter the house.

The lady is smiling.
The hostess with the powdered hair is Mrs.Mary Lindley Murray, wife of Robert Murray, British sympathizer and Quaker, and mother of Lindley Murray, the grammarian of later days; the house is the Murray Homestead, or the Manor of Incleberg, that in Revoluntionary times stood in the neighbourhood of what is now Park Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street; the Red Coats whose march westward she has interrupted are the troops of Lord Howe, in close pursuit of the badly demoralized soldiers of General Washington; the day is one of September, 1776.
A few weeks before the disastrous battle of Long Island had been fought.
The Continental cause seemed at the point of immediate collapse.

Day by day the list of deserters swelled.