And again I remember one fresh, sweet morning late in June, standing with my riflemen at a toll-gate to see some four hundred Tryon County militia marching past on their way to Unadilla on the Susquehanna, where Brant, with half a thousand savages, had consented to a last parley.  Stout, wholesome lads they were, these Tryon County men; wearing brown and yellow uniforms cut smartly, and their officers in the Continental buff and blue, riding like regulars; curved swords shining and their epaulets striking fire in the sunshine.

“Palatines!” said Mount, standing to salute as an officer rode by.  “That’s General Herkimer—­old Honikol Herkimer—­with his hard, weather-tanned jaws and the devil lurking under his eyebrows; and that young fellow in his smart uniform is Colonel Cox, old George Klock’s son-in-law; and yonder rides Colonel Harper!  Oh, I know ’em, sir; I was not in these parts for nothing in ’74 and ’75!”

The drums and fifes were playing “Unadilla” as the regiment marched past; and my riflemen, lounging along the roadside, exchanged pleasantries with the hardy Palatines, or greeted acquaintances in their impudent, bantering manner: 

“Hello!  What’s this Low Dutch regiment?  Say, Han Yost, the pigs has eat off your queue-band!  Bedad, they marrch like Albany ducks in fly-time!  Musha, thin, luk at the fat dhrummer laad!  Has he apples in thim two cheeks, Jack?  I dunnoa!  Hey, there goes Wagner!  Hello, Wagner!  Wisha, laad, ye’re cross-eyed an’ shquint-lipped a-playin’ yere fife hind-end furrst!”

And the replies from the dusty, brown ranks, steadily passing: 

“Py Gott! dere’s Jack Mount!  Look alretty, Jacob!  Hello, Elerson!  Ish dot true you patch your breeches mit second-hand scalps you puy in Montreal?  Vat you vas doing down here, Tim Murphy?  Oh, joost look at dem devils of Morgan!  Sure, Emelius, dey joost come so soon as ve go.  Ya!  Dey come to kiss our girls, py cricky!  Uf I catch you round my girl alretty, Dave Elerson—­”

“Silence!  Silence in the ranks!” sang out an officer, riding up.  The brown column passed on, the golden dust hanging along its flanks.  Far ahead we could still hear the drums and fifes playing “Unadilla.”

“They ought to have a flag; a flag’s a good thing to fight for,” said Mount, looking after them.  “I fought for the damned British rag when I was fifteen.  Lord! it makes me boil to think that they’ve forgot what we did for ’em!”

“We Virginians carried a flag at the siege o’ Boston,” observed Elerson.  “It was a rattlesnake on a white ground, with the motto, ’Don’t tread on me!’”

I told them of the new flag that our Congress had chosen, describing it in detail.  They listened attentively, but made no comment.