tavern of so long and highly colored a career. Yet it is said that General Heath made headquarters under its roof, being in charge of the American defenses near Kingsbridge before the island was evacuated by the patriots in 1776. Moreover, the Father of His Country himself is supposed to have stood before its door and reviewed his troops, marching past after the British evacuation. We three, claiming that the billet-doux is sometimes mightier than the sword, especially cherish the Blue Bell's love story. The Hessian Colonel Rahl, you see, being stationed hereabout, a young aide of his fell in love with the tavern keeper's charming daughter, promising to remain in America if she would but marry him. The wedding promptly took place in the tavern, beamed upon by father, mother, and commanding officer; and later on, when the Hessians were captured at Trenton, the young aide refused to be exchanged, and rejoiced his bride by taking the oath of allegiance to the United States.

At "Spiting Devil, else King's Bridge, where they pay threepence for passing over with a horse," the early travelers to Albany found welcome at Cock's Tavern, which Frederic Philipse built in 1693, and which a succession of hosts kept open until 1797, when Alexander Macomb rebuilt it into a residence, now

long familiar-squared in every outline to the angles of a cubist's dream, pompous and melancholy. But to the conjurer's wand rises Mrs. Lighte of Satanstoe, holding sway and offering hospitality. Here Corney Littlepage and his friend Dirck made frequent stops. And here more actual, but perhaps less real, heroes called for a mug to cheer them over dark hours of the Revolution.

At this point we parted company with the old road to Boston, and went our own way up the Hudson. Old Broadway, identical with the Post Road in these parts, led us through Yonkers, Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, Tarrytown, Harmon. It was all very up to date, very highly developed, very modern improvemented, very opulent. Our stagecoach passed with a meek grumble in the wake of assertive motor cars, like an elderly gentleman who feebly protests at the scorn of overriding youth. Large objects called villas loomed at us; millionaires' residences were starred on the map; rolling lands, where once the manor lords roamed proudly and at leisure, viewing the majestic Hudson and their own prosperity, were being cut up like so many yards of cloth into lengths, short lengths, and remnants, and offered as "exceptionally desirable." It was a sophisticated country, suave, unimaginative-and then, all of a sudden

I don't know how it happened. It never could happen again, because it was like some door that Alice found, like all those magic entrances to wonder worlds which, once closed, we never more can find. We recall them in half-caught and finally eluding flashesmemories that halt a moment in their swift brushing by, then, mocking, are goneand again it's a world of Subway din, and, "Why don't they deliver the chops I ordered?" and learning that the laundress has lost two fine linen towels on the roof. That ever and again a magic door does open into a world which thrills, and that after

ward the brush-and-away memory of it does now and then halt for an instant and let you feel the throb of its wings beating like the throb of your own imperishable youth, is perhaps the chief secret of fortitude in a world of Subways and laundresses and chops.

I don't know how it happened. I only know that somehow of a sudden we had slipped away from it all-from the reek of gasoline and the glare of modern improvements-and we were in a wild solitude, a lost and forgotten country, rising against the winter sky in purple peaks, flung out under the winter sun in long valleys, lithe and brown as wrestlers. We were in Scotland, in the north of England, in the land of Hardy, in lands made known and dear to us by the books we have loved-anywhere we were, except within an hour or two of our own bustling American metropolis.

And this the Post Road had done for us. It had translated us, picked us up bodily and made off with us to a world

THE POST ROAD TO-DAY

of romance. Not the so-called "Post Road," known to every tourist and efficiently mapped for his convenience through a maze of straight lines, wiggly lines, bridges, railroad crossings, and hostelries; but the veritable Post Road of other days, when chivalry and hearts. were young, and when it was with a heigh and a ho and a heigh-nonny-no that love and adventure set out hand in hand.

Somewhere, somehow this old road runs away from the new, back beyond the river, and, as if it were the younger of the two in spirit, it gives a fling to its heels and is off for the mountains, into a world of solitude and mystery and charm.

The Wife was poring over guidebooks. "It must have been near Croton-onHudson that the roads separated," she said, tracing lines on the map with a diligent finger. "We followed the banks of the Croton a way, you remember, until early bridge builders found an easy crossing, then over, and then a curving

road around the base of Hessian Hill. Next we dashed through Peekskill and entered the Highlands. One map says, 'Manito Mountains'-"

My fingers were in my ears and I cried out upon her: "Facts, guidebooks, geography be consigned to everlasting grief! Leave me to my illusions! I'm in another world, the world of the past. You practical little wretch, I've no doubt you would say that this is a jitney we're in, and that a sober young chauffeur is getting politely nervous about his tires, and that the taximeter is picking our pockets. But I tell you it's the stagecoach in which we are reeling and struggling up Gallows Hill, and that the horses are stumbling over frozen mud, and that a fat and furious old driver, embellished by numberless toddies, is shouting and rocking upon his perch, and beating the horses and warning us

all that we'll soon have to get out and march in weary file beside them. Meanwhile our frames are being shaken upon the bench seat-"

"As for shaken frames, I should say that the past hasn't anything on the present," she moaned, with such longsuffering in her big blue eyes that I relented, as usual, and hugged her, as our vehicle gave a despairing bump upon the rocks of this appalling road and came to a standstill.

We were in very fact on Gallows Hill, where Putnam hanged the British spy, and in the midst of an eighteenth-century adventure. The stagecoach itself couldn't have done more for us. To be sure, it was a modern motor truck loaded with coal that had stuck in the road ahead and halted our progress, but I'm sure they were eighteenth-century farm hands who came lumbering with bags to

relieve the load, and, eighteenth-centurywise, did we descend, Artist and chauffeur giving a lift, and then, returning to our car, did we ourselves stick in the selfsame ruts until the farm hands pulled us out in turn -and all the while, to my imagination, a toddy-heated driver shouted and cracked his whip and cried, "My blood!" With my very ears, I feel certain, did I hear him cry, "My blood!" although the Artist tells me that he, used other and more modern phraseology.

Yes, we were in fact traveling the exact road of those early travelers, through the most famous stretch of all the old way to Albany. The road of to-day leads gently nearer the river, but the milestones of the past point deep into the perils and the beauties of the mountains. At Cortlandtville, near the fiftieth stone, the most

wildly lovely portion of it had begun.

It had been at this point that a blow awaited us in our failure to find Dusenberry's tavern. We had seen delightful photographs of it taken by traveler scribes in recent years, and showing the room marked by an impressive X where André tarried.

"That's the place-right there," said the man driving the milk cart. And he pointed to a modern stone cottage, with willow chairs sitting in chilly loneliness upon the veranda.

"But it isn't!" we declared, fresh from

our Jenkins and our Hine. "This is Dusenberry's!" And I fairly shook in his face a half tone reproduction of the old Colonial building. "Major André and his escort stopped here while on their way to West Point,"" I read. "André was within a few miles of Arnold's headquarters and safety when the express sent by Jamieson arrived, and André was taken back to North Salem; Lieutenant Allen continued on through the Highlands with the note to Arnold, who was thus warned of the capture of his confederate and escaped.' And they show

you the front room on the right where André stayed-"

"Yeh," the milkman wagged. "Did show you. Was here. Tore down now." And he withdrew his head back into a fur collar, as a disdainful bird withdraws into its plumage, and drove off.

"Tore down" was Dusenberry's, and along with it was "tore down" one of our fondest hopes. We were consoled like children with a stick of candy, however, by our visit to the Pierre van Cortlandt house opposite, that landmark of the old Post Road where were sheltered Washington and his aides on many a night. It stands lonely and vast in the midst of its wintry land; and when the young English caretaker and his little wife in her ruffled English cap led us upstairs, and with bated breath threw open the door of what appeared to be a closet and revealed instead a closely built wall, I know that my spine, for one, was creeping.

"I can't say," said the young caretaker, and his voice sank to a pitch of mystery, "but they do say as that wall incloses a secret staircase that led down to the cellar, and then a tunnel out to the woods-"

"Ooo! I'll be thinkin' about it after it's dark!" And I turned to see a ruffled English cap disappearing down the hall.

The building is, I understand, to become an orphan asylum. And my prayer rises that no poor little orphan may ever be naughty enough to be shut into the room upon which opens that door.

To the road again-and next the plunge, across Annsville Creek and into the very heart of the most thrilling stretch of all the old miles. Here travelers were at times overtaken by darkness and storm and delayed many nights; here the highwayman lurked; here the overturning of the coach was no unheard-of event on a road that dips now like a diver, again cat-stitches in a series of sharp bends. In 1823, when two stage lines were competing here, the newspapers reported a dire disaster resulting from the rival drivers racing.

The stage was overset in the Highlands with six passengers on board; one of whom, a gentleman from Vermont, had his collar bone broken, and the others were more or less injured and all placed in the utmost jeopardy of their lives and limbs by the outrageous conduct of the driver. . . . He could not assist them, as it required all his efforts to restrain the frighted horses from dashing down the hill which must have destroyed them all. It was with the greatest difficulty that the wounded passengers extricated themselves from the wreck. . . .