midnight
The rain rushed down , not in drops , but in sheets , and in spite of his cloak , he was wet to the skin . For half an hour he was obliged to halt in the wood between Old Kennett and Chadd 's Ford , and here he made the discovery that with all his care the holsters were nearly full of water . Brown streams careered down the long , meadowy hollow on his left , wherein many Hessian soldiers lay buried . There was money buried with them , the people believed , but no one cared to dig among the dead at midnight , and many a wild tale of frighted treasure-seekers recurred to his mind . At the bottom of the long hill flowed the Brandywine , now rolling swift and turbid , level with its banks . Roger bravely breasted the flood , and after a little struggle , reached the opposite side . Then across the battle-meadow , in the teeth of the storm , along the foot of the low hill , around the brow of which the entrenchments of the American army made a clayey streak , until the ill-fated field , sown with grape-shot and bullets which the farmers turned up every spring with their furrows , lay behind him .