told the villagers that their day was approaching. The
British troops on Staten Island were steadily reinforced; the
small boats of the line-of-battle ships and frigates were gathered
opposite Amboy and Paulus Hook; large supplies of
forage and cattle were massed at various points. Everything
betokened an intended descent of the royal army into New
Jersey; that the new-made State was to be baptised with
blood.

The successive defeats of the Continental army wonderfully
cooled many of the townspeople who but a few months before
had vigorously applauded and saluted the glowing lines of the
Declaration of Independence, when it had been read aloud to
them by the Rev. Mr. McClave. One of the first evidences
of this alteration of outward manner, if not of inward faith,
was shown in the sudden change adopted by the community
toward the household of Greenwood. When the squire had
departed in custody he apparently possessed not one friend in
Brunswick, but within a month of his return the villagers, the
parson excepted, were making bows to him, in the growing
obsequiousness of which might be inferred the growing desperation
of the Continental cause. Yet another indication
was the appearance of certain of the," Invincibles," who came
straggling sheepishly into town one by one--"Just ter see how
all the folks wuz"--and who, for reasons they kept more
private, failed to rejoin their company after having satisfied
their curiosity. Most incriminating of all, however, was the
return of Bagby from the session of the Legislature then being
held in Princeton, and his failure to go to Amboy to take
command of his once gloried-in company.