“Unhappy affair indeed!” exclaimed Walter.  “What a heartless wretch he must have been, mamma!”

“And how our poor soldiers did suffer!” sighed Lulu; “it makes my heart ache just to think of it!”

“And mine,” said Grandma Elsie.  “It is wonderful how much the poor fellows were willing to endure in the hope of attaining freedom for themselves and their country.

“Thomas Rodney tells us that on the night of the attack upon Trenton of which we have been talking, while Rall caroused and played cards beside his warm fire, our poor soldiers were toiling and suffering with cold and nakedness, facing wind and sleet in the defence of their country.

“The night,” he says, “was as severe a night as ever I saw; the frost was sharp, the current difficult to stem, the ice increasing, the wind high, and at eleven it began to snow.  It was three in the morning of the 26th before the troops and cannon were all over, and another hour passed before they could be formed on the Jersey side.  A violent northeast storm of wind, sleet, and hail set in as they began their nine miles’ march to Trenton, against an enemy in the best condition to fight.  The weather was terrible for men clad as they were, and the ground slipped under their feet.  For a mile and a half they had to climb a steep hill, from which they descended to the road that ran for about three miles between hills and forests of hickory, ash, and black oak.”

“Oh, how brave and patriotic they were!” exclaimed Rosie.  “I remember reading that their route might be easily traced by the blood on the snow from the feet of the poor fellows, who had broken shoes or none.  Oh, what a shame it was that Congress and the people let them—­the men who were enduring so much and fighting so bravely for the liberty of both—­bear such hardships!”

“It was, indeed,” sighed Grandma Elsie; “it always gives me a heartache to think of those poor fellows marching through the darkness and that dreadful storm of snow, sleet, and bitter wind and only half clothed.  Just think of it! a continuous march of fifteen miles through darkness, over such a road, the storm directly in their faces.  They reached their destination stiff with cold, yet rushed at once upon the foe, fighting bravely for freedom for themselves and their children.  ’Victory or death,’ was the watchword Washington had given them.”

“Were they from all the States, mamma?” asked Walter.

“They were principally Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New England troops,” she answered.  “Grant, the British commander in New Jersey, knew of the destitution of our troops but felt no fear that they would really venture to attack him; persuading himself that they would not cross the river because the floating ice would make it a difficult, if not impossible, thing for them to return.

“‘Besides,’ he wrote on the 21st, ’Washington’s men have neither shoes nor stockings nor blankets, are almost naked, and dying of cold and want of food.’”