* * *

  In view of all he lost,—­his youth, his love,
    And possibilities that wait the brave,
  Inward and outward bound dim visions move
    Like passing sails upon the Hudson’s wave.

  Charlotte Fiske Bates.

* * *

It is impossible even in these later years, not to speak of twenty-five or fifty years ago, to travel along the shores of Haverstraw Bay or among the passes of the Highlands, without hearing some old-time stories about Arnold and Andre, and it would be strange indeed if a little romance had not here and there become blended with the real facts.  Uncle Richard’s account is undoubtedly the best since the days of Knickerbocker.  “Benedict Arnold, you know, had command of West Point, and he knew that the place was essential to the success of the Continental cause.  He plotted, as everybody knows, to turn it over to the enemy, and in the correspondence which he carried on with General Clinton, young Andre, Clinton’s aid, did all the writing.  Things were coming to a focus, when a meeting took place between Arnold and Clinton’s representative, Andre, at the house of Joshua Hett Smith, near Haverstraw.  Andre came on the British ship “Vulture,” which he left at Croton Point, in Haverstraw Bay.  Well,” so runs Uncle Richard’s story, “it took a long time to get matters settled; they ‘confabbed’ till after daybreak.  Then Arnold started back to the post which he had plotted to surrender.  But daylight was no time for Andre to return to the “Vulture,” so he hung round waiting for night.

“During that day, some men who were working for James Horton, a farmer on the ridge overlooking the river, who gave his men good rations of cider, drank a little too much of the hard stuff.  They felt good, and thought it would be a fine joke to load and fire off an old disabled cannon which lay a mile or so away on the bank.  They hauled it to the point now called Cockroft Point, propped it up, and then the spirit of fun—­and hard cider—­prompted them to train the old piece on the British ship “Vulture,” lying at anchor in the Bay.  The “Vulture’s” people must have overestimated the source of the fire, for the ship dropped down the river, and Andre had to abandon the idea of returning by that means.  He crossed the river at King’s Ferry, and while on his way overland was captured at Tarrytown.

“Of course, the three brave men who refused to be bribed deserve all the glory they ever had; if it were not for them, who knows but the revolutionary war would have had a different ending.  But they never would have had a chance to capture Andre if it had not been for James Horton’s men warming up on hard cider.  Hard cider broke the plans of Arnold, it hung Andre, and it saved West Point.”  A boy misguided Grouchy en route to Waterloo.  On what small hinges turn the destinies of nations!

* * *

    A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that
    overhung the river, giving greater depth to the dark-gray and
    purple of the rocky sides.