as was needful in a land where most long journeys were made on horseback.

It seems to me now, as I look back, that the events of life were preparing
me and my friend Jack for what was to follow. Our boating made every part
of the two rivers familiar. Now that I had a horse, Jack's father, who
would always do for him readily what my Aunt Gainor did for me, yielded to
his desire to ride; and so it was that we began, as leisure served, to
extend our rides to Germantown, or even to Chestnut Hill. Thus all the
outlying country became well known to both of us, and there was not a road,
a brook, or a hill which we did not know.

Until this happy time I had been well pleased to follow my aunt on a
pillion behind her servant, Caesar, but now I often went with her, perched
on my big horse, and got from my aunt, an excellent horsewoman, some sharp
lessons as to leaping, and certain refinements in riding that she had seen
or known of in London.

A Captain Montresor--he who afterward, when a colonel, was Howe's
engineer--used to ride with her in the spring of '69. He was a tall, stout
man of middle age, and much spoken of as likely to marry my Aunt Gainor,
although she was older than he, for, as fat Oliver de Lancey said years
after, "There is no age to a woman's money, and guineas are always young."
My aunt, Gainor Wynne, was still a fine gentlewoman, and did not look her
years. As concerned this question of age, she was like a man, and so in
fact she was in some other ways. She would tell any one how old she was.
She once informed Mr. de Lancey that she was so much more of a man than any
British officer she knew that she did not see how she could decently marry
any of them.

I think it was about this time that I saw a little scene which much