THE TOWN, OF GREENBURGH. 325 



of whose intentions they had been apprised, Mr. Cunningham mentioned 

 to Newton that, on the preceding night, he had a very extraordinary 

 dream, which he could not get out of his head. He had fancied him- 

 self in a forest; the place was strange to him; and, whilst looking about, 

 he perceived a horseman approaching at great speed, who had scarcely 

 reached the spot where the dreamer stood, when three men rushed out 

 of the thicket, and, seizing the bridle, hurried him away, after closely 

 searching his person. The countenance of the stranger being very in- 

 teresting, the sympathy felt by the sleeper for his apparent misfortune 

 awoke him; but he presently fell asleep again, and dreamt that he was 

 standing near a great city, amongst thousands of people, and that he 

 saw the same person he had seen seized in the wood, brought out and 

 suspended to a gallows. When Andre and Miss Seward arrived, he was 

 horror-struck to perceive that his new acquaintance was the antitype of 

 man in the dream. a 



In the 3d November, 1775, he was taken prisoner with the garrison 

 by the Americans under General Montgomery at St. John' s in Canada. 

 Towards the close of the year 1776 most of the prisoners made by 

 either side in Canada were exchanged and Andre thus obtained his 

 freedom by their means, through whom he had lost it. The skeleton of 

 the Seventh was transferred from that Province to New York; recruits 

 and new clothing were sent out from England ; and in the end of Decem- 

 ber, the regiment, including the men lately discharged from Pennsylvania, 

 marched into town with tolerably full ranks. Andre did not, however, 

 long remain in it ; on the 18th January, 1777, he received a captaincy 

 in the Twenty-sixth, which had been so augmented that each company 

 consisted of sixty-four men, exclusive of commissioned officers. But a 

 staff appointment was his legitimate sphere, and there was for the time 

 none such vacant. He therefore remained on line duty. His regiment 

 was fortunately not one of those that Tryon led in April, 1777, to Dan- 

 bury ; otherwise he might have met Benedict Arnold face to face and 

 shared in the questionable glories of what Clinton honestly confesses to 

 have been " a second Lexington." 6 In the beginning of the summer he 

 was named aide-de-camp to Major-General Grey. In Grey's retirement 

 Andre, with the provincial rank of Major, was appointed aide to Sir 

 Henry Clinton, the son of Admiral George Clinton, once Governor of 

 New York, who was second son of the ninth earl of Lincoln. Andre's 

 conspicuous merit and aimable character had soon made him the most 

 important person of Clinton's staff, and won the admiration of all who 



a Ainsworth's Magazine. 

 b Clinton MS. 



