



Produced by David Garcia, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks,
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THE RANGERS

OR, THE TORY'S DAUGHTER

A Tale Illustrative Of The Revolutionary History Of Vermont And The
Northern Campaign Of 1777

By D. P. Thompson

The Author Of "The Green Mountain Boys"


Two Volumes In One

Tenth Edition





VOLUME I.


On commencing his former work, illustrative of the revolutionary history
of Vermont,--THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS,--it was the design of the author
to have embraced the battle of Bennington, and other events of historic
interest which occurred in the older and more southerly parts of the
state; but finding, as he proceeded, that the unity and interest of his
effort would be endangered by embracing so much ground, a part of the
original design was relinquished, or rather its execution was deferred
for a new and separate work, wherein better justice could be done to the
rich and unappropriated materials of which his researches had put him in
possession. That work, after an interval of ten years, and the writing
and publishing of several intermediate ones, is now presented to the
public, and with the single remark, that if it is made to possess less
interest, as a mere tale, than its predecessor, the excuse must be found
in the author's greater anxiety to give a true historic version of the
interesting and important events he has undertaken to illustrate.




THE RANGERS;

OR,

THE TORY'S DAUGHTER




CHAPTER I.

  "Sing on! sing on! my mountain home,
   The paths where erst I used to roam,
   The thundering torrent lost in foam.
   The snow-hill side all bathed in light,--
   All, all are bursting on my sight!"



Towards night, on the twelfth of March, 1775, a richly-equipped double
sleigh, filled with a goodly company of well-dressed persons of the
different sexes, was seen descending from the eastern side of the Green
Mountains, along what may now be considered the principal thoroughfare
leading from the upper navigable portions of the Hudson to those of the
Connecticut River. The progress of the travellers was not only slow,
but extremely toilsome, as was plainly evinced by the appearance of
the reeking and jaded horses, as they labored and floundered along the
sloppy and slumping snow paths of the winter road, which was obviously
now fast resolving itself into the element of which it was composed. Up
to the previous evening, the dreary reign of winter had continued wholly
uninterrupted by the advent of his more gentle successor in the changing
rounds of the seasons; and the snowy waste which enveloped the earth
would, that morning, have apparently withstood the rains and suns of
months before yielding entirely to their influences. But during the
night there had occurred one of those great and sudden transitions from
cold to heat, which can only be experienced in northern climes, and
which can be accounted for only on the supposition, that the earth, at
stated intervals, rapidly gives out large quantities of its internal
heats, or that the air becomes suddenly rarefied by some essential
change or modification in the state of the electric fluid. The morning
had been cloudless; and the rising sun, with rays no longer dimly
struggling through the dense, obstructing medium of the dark months gone
by, but, with the restored beams of his natural brightness, fell upon
the smoking earth with the genial warmth of summer. A new atmosphere,
indeed, seemed to have been suddenly created, so warm and bland was
the whole air; while, occasionally, a breeze came over the face of the
traveller, which seemed like the breath of a heated oven. As the day
advanced, the sky gradually became overcast--a strong south wind sprung
up, before whose warm puffs the drifted snow-banks seemed literally to
be cut down, like grass before the scythe of the mower; and, at length,
from the thickening mass of cloud above, the rain began to descend in
torrents to the mutely recipient earth. All this, for a while, however,
produced no very visible effects on the general face of nature; for the
melting snow was many hours in becoming saturated with its own and water
from above. Nor had our travellers, for the greater part of the day,
been much incommoded by the rain, or the thaw, that was in silent, but
rapid progress around and beneath them; as their vehicle was a covered
one, and as