"No, no, no, Massa Harry," cried the negro, shaking his gray head
confidently; "I been to see--Massa Harper on he knee--pray to God--no
gemman who pray to God tell of good son, come to see old fader--Skinner
do that--no Christian!"

This poor opinion of the Skinners was not confined to Mr. Caesar
Thompson, as he called himself--but Caesar Wharton, as he was styled by
the little world to which he was known. The convenience, and perhaps the
necessities, of the leaders of the American arms, in the neighborhood of
New York, had induced them to employ certain subordinate agents, of
extremely irregular habits, in executing their lesser plans of annoying
the enemy. It was not a moment for fastidious inquiries into abuses of
any description, and oppression and injustice were the natural
consequences of the possession of a military power that was uncurbed by
the restraints of civil authority. In time, a distinct order of the
community was formed, whose sole occupation appears to have been that of
relieving their fellow citizens from any little excess of temporal
prosperity they might be thought to enjoy, under the pretense of
patriotism and the love of liberty.

Occasionally, the aid of military authority was not wanting, in
enforcing these arbitrary distributions of worldly goods; and a petty
holder of a commission in the state militia was to be seen giving the
sanction of something like legality to acts of the most unlicensed
robbery, and, not infrequently, of bloodshed.

On the part of the British, the stimulus of loyalty was by no means
suffered to sleep, where so fruitful a field offered on which it might
be expended. But their freebooters were enrolled, and their efforts more
systematized. Long experience had taught their leaders the efficacy of