pace. Schoolcraft was the first to advance. Two hundred and fifty men
followed him. An immediate sally was made. They carried the camp of Sir
John Johnson; took all his baggage, military-chest, and papers; drove
him through the Mohawk River; and then turned upon the howling Mohawks
and swept and fired their camp. The results of this battle were
brilliant. The plunder was immense. The lines of the besiegers, which
had been thinned by the forces sent to Oriskany, were carried, and the
noise of firing and rumors of a reinforcement, animated the hearts of
the indomitable men of that day.

[Footnote 4: Annals of Teyon County.]

After the victory, Herkimer was carried by his men, in a litter, thirty
or forty miles to his own house, below the present town of Herkimer,
where he died, from an unskillful amputation, having just concluded
reading to his family the 38th Psalm.

But the most dangerous enemy to the cause of freedom was not to be found
in the field, but among neighbors who were lurking at midnight around
the scenes of home. The districts of Albany and Schoharie was infested
by Tories, and young Schoolcraft was ever on the _qui vive_ to ferret
out this most insidious and cruel of the enemy's power. On one occasion
he detected a Tory, who had returned from Canada with a lieutenant's
commission in his pocket. He immediately clapped spurs to his horse, and
reported him to Gov. George Clinton, the Chairman of the Committee of
Safety at Albany. Within three days the lieutenant was seized, tried,
condemned and hanged. Indeed, a volume of anecdotes might be written of
Lawrence Schoolcraft's revolutionary life; suffice it to say, that he
was a devoted, enthusiastic, enterprizing soldier and patriot, and came
out of the contest with an adjutant's commission and a high reputation