One hundred years' and one ago, in Boston, at ten of the clock one April
night, a church steeple had been climbed and a lantern hung out.
At ten, the same night, in mid-river of the Charles, oarsmen two, with
passenger silent and grim, had seen the signal light out-swung, and
rowed with speed for the Charlestown shore.
At eleven, the moon was risen, and the grim passenger, Paul Revere, had
ridden up the Neck, encountered a foe, who opposed his ride into the
country, and, after a brief delay, rode on, leaving a British officer
lying in a clay pit.
At mid-night, a hundred ears had heard the flying horseman cry, "Up and
arm. The Regulars are coming out!"
You know the story well. You have heard how the wild alarm ran from
voice to voice and echoed beneath every roof, until the men of Lexington
and Concord were stirred and aroused with patriotic fear for the safety
of the public stores that had been committed to their keeping.
You know how, long ere the chill April day began to dawn, they had
drawn, by horse power and by hand power, the cherished stores into safe
hiding-places in the depth of friendly forest-coverts.
There is one thing about that day that you have NOT heard and I will
tell you now. It is, how one little woman staid in the town of Concord,
whence all the women save her had fled.
All the houses that were standing then, are very old-fashioned now, but
there was one dwelling-place on Concord Common that was old-fashioned
even then! It was the abode of Martha Moulton and "Uncle John." Just who
"Uncle John" was, is not now known, but he was probably Martha Moulton's
uncle. The uncle, it appears by record, was eighty-five years old; while
the niece was ONLY three-score and eleven.
Once and again that morning, a friendly hand had pulled the latch-string
at Martha Moulton's kitchen entrance and offered to convey herself and
treasures away, but, to either proffer, she had said: "No, I must stay
until Uncle John gets the cricks out of his back, if all the British
soldiers in the land march into town."
At last, came Joe Devins, a lad of fifteen years--Joe's two astonished
eyes peered for a moment into Martha Moulton's kitchen, and then eyes
and owner dashed into the room, to learn, what the sight he there saw,
could mean.
"Whew! Mother Moulton, what are you doing?"
"I'm getting Uncle John his breakfast to be sure, Joe," she answered.
"Have you seen so many sights this morning that you don't know
breakfast, when you see it? Have a care there, for hot fat WILL burn,"
as she deftly poured the contents of a pan, fresh from the fire, into a
dish.
Hungry Joe had been astir since the first drum had beat to arms at two
of the clock. He gave one glance at the boiling cream and the slices
of crisp pork swimming in it, as he gasped forth the words, "Getting
breakfast in Concord THIS morning! MOTHER MOULTON, you MUST be crazy."
"So they tell me," she said, serenely. "There comes Uncle John!" she
added, as the clatter of a staff on the stone steps of the stairway
outrang, for an instant, the cries of hurrying and confusion that filled
the air of the street.
"Don't you know, Mother Moulton," Joe went on to say, "that every single
woman and child have been carried off, where the Britishers won't find
'em?"
"I don't believe the king's troops have stirred out of Boston," she
replied, going to the door leading to the stone staircase, to open it
for Uncle John.
"Don't believe it?" and Joe looked, as he echoed the words, as though
only a boy could feel sufficient disgust at such want of common sense,
in full view of the fact, that Reuben Brown had just brought the news
that eight men had been killed by the king's Red-coats, in Lexington,
which fact he made haste to impart.
"I won't believe a word of it," she said, stoutly, "until I see the
soldiers coming."
"Ah! Hear that!" cried Joe, tossing back his hair and swinging his arms
triumphantly at an airy foe. "You won't have to wait long. THAT
SIGNAL is for the minute men. They are going to march out to meet the
Red-coats. Wish I was a minute man, this minute."
Meanwhile, poor Uncle John was getting down the steps of the stairway,
with many a grimace and groan. As he touched the floor, Joe, his face
beaming with excitement and enthusiasm, sprang to place a chair for him
at the table, saying, "Good morning!" at the same moment.
"May be," groaned Uncle John, "youngsters LIKE YOU may think it is a
good morning, but I DON'T, such a din and clatter as the fools have kept
up all night long. If I had the power" (and now the poor old man fairly
groaned with rage), "I'd make 'em quiet long enough to let an old man
get a wink of sleep, when the rheumatism lets go."
"I'm real sorry for you," said Joe, "but you don't know the news. The
king's troops, from camp, in Boston, are marching right down here, to
carry off all our arms that they can find."
"Are they?" was the sarcastic rejoined. "It's the best news I've heard
in a long while. Wish they had my arms, this minute. They wouldn't carry
them a step farther than they could help, I know. Run and tell them mine
are ready, Joe."
"But, Uncle John, wait till after breakfast, you'll want to use them
once more," said Martha Moulton, trying to help him into the chair that
Joe had placed on the white sanded floor.
Meanwhile, Joe Devins had ears for all the sounds that penetrated
the kitchen from out of doors, and he had eyes for the slices of
well-browned pork and the golden hued Johnny-cake lying before the
glowing coals on the broad hearth.
As the little woman bent to take up the breakfast, Joe, intent on doing
some kindness for her in the way of saving treasures, asked, "Shan't I
help you, Mother Moulton?"
"I reckon I am not so old that I can't lift a mite of cornbread," she
replied with chilling severity.
"Oh, I didn't mean to lift THAT THING," he made haste to explain, "but
to carry off things and hide 'em away, as everybody else has been doing
half the night. I know a first-rate place up in the woods. Used to be a
honey tree, you know, and it's just as hollow as anything. Silver
spoons and things would be just as safe in it--" but Joe's words were
interrupted by unusual tumult on the street and he ran off to learn the
news, intending to return and get the breakfast that had been offered to
him.
Presently he rushed back to the house with cheeks aflame and eyes ablaze
with excitement. "They're a coming!" he cried. "They're in sight down by
the rocks. They see 'em marching, the men on the hill, do!"
"You don't mean that its really true that the soldiers are coming here,
RIGHT INTO OUR TOWN," cried Martha Moulton, rising in haste and bringing
together with rapid flourishes to right and to left, every fragment
of silver on the table. Uncle John strove to hold fast his individual
spoon, but she twitched it without ceremony out from his rheumatic old
fingers, and ran next to the parlor cupboard, wherein lay her movable
valuables.
"What in the world shall I do with them," she cried, returning with her
apron well filled with treasures, and borne down by the weight thereof.
"Give 'em to me," cried Joe. "Here's a basket, drop 'em in, and I'll run
like a brush-fire through the town and across the old bridge, and hide
'em as safe as a weasel's nap."
Joe's fingers were creamy; his mouth was half filled with Johnny-cake,
and his pocket on the right bulged to its utmost capacity with the same,
as he held forth the basket; but the little woman was afraid to trust
him, as she had been afraid to trust her neighbors.
"No! No!" she replied, to his repeated offers. "I know what I'll do.
You, Joe Devins, stay right where you are till I come back, and, don't
you ever LOOK out of the window."
"Dear, dear me!" she cried, flushed and anxious when she was out of
sight of Uncle John and Joe. "I WISH I'd given 'em to Col. Barrett when
he was here before daylight, only, I WAS afraid I should never get sight
of them again."
She drew off one of her stockings, filled it, tied the opening at the
top with a string-plunged stocking and all into a pail full of water and
proceeded to pour the contents into the well.
Just as the dark circle had closed over the blue stockings, Joe Devin's
face peered down the depths by her side, and his voice sounded out the
words: "O Mother Moulton, the British will search the wells the VERY
first thing. Of course, they EXPECT to find things in wells!"
"Why didn't you tell me before, Joe? but now it is too late."
"I would, if I'd known what you was going to do; they'd been a sight
safer, in the honey tree."
"Yes, and what a fool I've been--flung MY WATCH into the well with the
spoons!"
"Well, well! Don't stand there, looking," as she hovered over the high
curb, with her hand on the bucket. "Everybody will know, if you do,
there."
"Martha! Martha?" shrieked Uncle John's quavering voice from the house
door.
"Bless my heart!" she exclaimed, hurrying back over the stones.
"What's the matter with your heart?" questioned Joe.
"Nothing. I was thinking of Uncle John's money," she answered.
"Has he got money?" cried Joe. "I thought he was poor, and you took care
of him because you were so good."
Not one word that Joe uttered did the little woman hear. She was already
by Uncle John's side and asking him for the key to his strong box.
Uncle John's rheumatism was terribly exasperating. "No, I won't give
it to you!" he cried, "and nobody shall have it as long as I'm above
ground."
"Then the soldiers will carry it off," she said.
"Let 'em!" was his reply, grasping his staff firmly with both hands and
gleaming defiance out of his wide, pale eyes. "YOU won't get the key,
even if they do."
At this instant, a voice at the doorway shouted the words, "Hide, hide
away somewhere, Mother Moulton, for the Red-coats are in sight this
minute!"
She heard the warning, and giving one glance at Uncle John, which look
was answered by another, "no, you won't have it," she grasped Joe Devins
by the collar of his jacket and thrust him before her up the staircase,
so quickly that the boy had no chance to speak, until she released her
hold at the entrance to Uncle John's room.
The idea of being taken prisoner in such a manner, and by a woman, too,
was too much for the lad's endurance. "Let me go!" he cried, the instant
he could recover his breath. "I won't hide away in your garret, like a
woman, I won't. I want to see the militia and the minute men fight the
troops, I do."
"Help me first, Joe. Here, quick now; let's get this box out and up
garret. We'll hide it under the corn and it'll be safe," she coaxed.
The box was under Uncle John's bed.
"What's in the old thing any how?" questioned Joe, pulling with all his
strength at it.
The box, or chest, was painted red, and was bound about by massive iron
bands.
"I've never seen the inside of it," said Mother Moulton. "It holds the
poor old soul's sole treasure, and I DO want to save it for him if I
can."
They had drawn it with much hard endeavor, as far as the garret stairs,
but their united strength failed to lift it. "Heave it, now!" cried Joe,
and lo! it was up two steps. So they turned it over and over with many a
thudding thump; every one of which thumps Uncle John heard, and believed
to be strokes upon the box itself to burst it asunder, until it was
fairly shelved on the garret floor.
In the very midst of the overturnings, a voice from below had been
heard crying out, "Let my box alone! Don't break it open. If you do,
I'll--I'll--" but, whatever the poor man MEANT to threaten as a penalty,
he could not think of anything half severe enough to say and so left it
uncertain as to the punishment that might be looked for.
"Poor old soul!" ejaculated the little woman, her soft white curls in
disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead,
as she bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter's edge.
"Now, Joe," she said, "we'll heap nubbins over it, and if the soldiers
want corn they'll take good ears and never think of touching poor
nubbins"; so they fell to work throwing corn over the red chest, until
it was completely concealed from view.
Then he sprang to the high-up-window ledge in the point of the roof and
took one glance out. "Oh, I see them, the Red-coats. True's I live,
there go the militia UP THE HILL. I thought they was going to stand and
defend. Shame on 'em, I say." Jumping down and crying back to Mother
Moulton, "I'm going to stand by the minute men," he went down, three
steps at a leap, and nearly overturned Uncle John on the stairs, who,
with many groans was trying to get to the defense of his strong box.
"What did you help her for, you scamp," he demanded of Joe, flourishing
his staff unpleasantly near the lad's head.
"'Cause she asked me to, and couldn't do it alone," returned Joe,
dodging the stick and disappearing from the scene, at the very moment
Martha Moulton encountered Uncle John.
"Your strong box is safe under nubbins in the garret, unless the house
burns down, and now that you are up here, you had better stay," she
added soothingly, as she hastened by him to reach the kitchen below.
Once there, she paused a second or two to take resolution regarding her
next act. She knew full well that there was not one second to spare,
and yet she stood looking, apparently, into the glowing embers on the
hearth. She was flushed and excited, both by the unwonted toil, and
the coming events. Cobwebs from the rafters had fallen on her hair and
home-spun dress, and would readily have betrayed her late occupation, to
any discerning soldier of the king.
A smile broke suddenly over her face, displacing for a brief second
every trace of care. "It's my only weapon, and I must use it," she
said, making a stately courtesy to an imaginary guest and straightway
disappeared within an adjoining room. With buttoned door and dropped
curtains the little woman made haste to array herself in her finest
raiment. In five minutes she reappeared in the kitchen, a picture
pleasant to look at. In all New England, there could not be a more
beautiful little old lady than Martha Moulton was that day. Her hair was
guiltless now of cobwebs, but haloed her face with fluffy little curls
of silvery whiteness, above which, like a crown, was a little cap of
dotted muslin, pure as snow. Her erect figure, not a particle of the
hard-working-day in it now, carried well the folds of a sheeny, black
silk gown, over which she had tied an apron as spotless as the cap.
As she fastened back her gown and hurried away the signs of the
breakfast she had not eaten, the clear pink tints seemed to come out
with added beauty of coloring in her cheeks; while her hair seemed
fairer and whiter than at any moment in her three-score and eleven
years.
Once more Joe Devins looked in. As he caught a glimpse of the picture
she made, he paused to cry out: "All dressed up to meet the robbers! My,
how fine you do look! I wouldn't. I'd go and hide behind the nubbins.
They'll be here in less than five minutes now," he cried, "and I'm going
over the North Bridge to see what's going on there."
"O Joe, stay, won't you?" she urged, but the lad was gone, and she
was left alone to meet the foe, comforting herself with the thought,
"They'll treat me with more respect if I LOOK respectable, and if I must
die, I'll die good-looking in my best clothes, anyhow."
She threw a few sticks of hickory-wood on the embers, and then drew
out the little round stand, on which the family Bible was always lying.
Recollecting that the British soldiers probably belonged to the Church
of England, she hurried away to fetch Uncle John's "prayer-book."
"They'll have respect to me, if they find me reading that, I know,"
she thought. Having drawn the round stand within sight of the well, and
where she could also command a view of the staircase, she sat and waited
for coming events.
Uncle John was keeping watch of the advancing troops from an upper
window. "Martha," he called, "you'd better come up. They're close by,
now." To tell the truth, Uncle John himself
night, a church steeple had been climbed and a lantern hung out.
At ten, the same night, in mid-river of the Charles, oarsmen two, with
passenger silent and grim, had seen the signal light out-swung, and
rowed with speed for the Charlestown shore.
At eleven, the moon was risen, and the grim passenger, Paul Revere, had
ridden up the Neck, encountered a foe, who opposed his ride into the
country, and, after a brief delay, rode on, leaving a British officer
lying in a clay pit.
At mid-night, a hundred ears had heard the flying horseman cry, "Up and
arm. The Regulars are coming out!"
You know the story well. You have heard how the wild alarm ran from
voice to voice and echoed beneath every roof, until the men of Lexington
and Concord were stirred and aroused with patriotic fear for the safety
of the public stores that had been committed to their keeping.
You know how, long ere the chill April day began to dawn, they had
drawn, by horse power and by hand power, the cherished stores into safe
hiding-places in the depth of friendly forest-coverts.
There is one thing about that day that you have NOT heard and I will
tell you now. It is, how one little woman staid in the town of Concord,
whence all the women save her had fled.
All the houses that were standing then, are very old-fashioned now, but
there was one dwelling-place on Concord Common that was old-fashioned
even then! It was the abode of Martha Moulton and "Uncle John." Just who
"Uncle John" was, is not now known, but he was probably Martha Moulton's
uncle. The uncle, it appears by record, was eighty-five years old; while
the niece was ONLY three-score and eleven.
Once and again that morning, a friendly hand had pulled the latch-string
at Martha Moulton's kitchen entrance and offered to convey herself and
treasures away, but, to either proffer, she had said: "No, I must stay
until Uncle John gets the cricks out of his back, if all the British
soldiers in the land march into town."
At last, came Joe Devins, a lad of fifteen years--Joe's two astonished
eyes peered for a moment into Martha Moulton's kitchen, and then eyes
and owner dashed into the room, to learn, what the sight he there saw,
could mean.
"Whew! Mother Moulton, what are you doing?"
"I'm getting Uncle John his breakfast to be sure, Joe," she answered.
"Have you seen so many sights this morning that you don't know
breakfast, when you see it? Have a care there, for hot fat WILL burn,"
as she deftly poured the contents of a pan, fresh from the fire, into a
dish.
Hungry Joe had been astir since the first drum had beat to arms at two
of the clock. He gave one glance at the boiling cream and the slices
of crisp pork swimming in it, as he gasped forth the words, "Getting
breakfast in Concord THIS morning! MOTHER MOULTON, you MUST be crazy."
"So they tell me," she said, serenely. "There comes Uncle John!" she
added, as the clatter of a staff on the stone steps of the stairway
outrang, for an instant, the cries of hurrying and confusion that filled
the air of the street.
"Don't you know, Mother Moulton," Joe went on to say, "that every single
woman and child have been carried off, where the Britishers won't find
'em?"
"I don't believe the king's troops have stirred out of Boston," she
replied, going to the door leading to the stone staircase, to open it
for Uncle John.
"Don't believe it?" and Joe looked, as he echoed the words, as though
only a boy could feel sufficient disgust at such want of common sense,
in full view of the fact, that Reuben Brown had just brought the news
that eight men had been killed by the king's Red-coats, in Lexington,
which fact he made haste to impart.
"I won't believe a word of it," she said, stoutly, "until I see the
soldiers coming."
"Ah! Hear that!" cried Joe, tossing back his hair and swinging his arms
triumphantly at an airy foe. "You won't have to wait long. THAT
SIGNAL is for the minute men. They are going to march out to meet the
Red-coats. Wish I was a minute man, this minute."
Meanwhile, poor Uncle John was getting down the steps of the stairway,
with many a grimace and groan. As he touched the floor, Joe, his face
beaming with excitement and enthusiasm, sprang to place a chair for him
at the table, saying, "Good morning!" at the same moment.
"May be," groaned Uncle John, "youngsters LIKE YOU may think it is a
good morning, but I DON'T, such a din and clatter as the fools have kept
up all night long. If I had the power" (and now the poor old man fairly
groaned with rage), "I'd make 'em quiet long enough to let an old man
get a wink of sleep, when the rheumatism lets go."
"I'm real sorry for you," said Joe, "but you don't know the news. The
king's troops, from camp, in Boston, are marching right down here, to
carry off all our arms that they can find."
"Are they?" was the sarcastic rejoined. "It's the best news I've heard
in a long while. Wish they had my arms, this minute. They wouldn't carry
them a step farther than they could help, I know. Run and tell them mine
are ready, Joe."
"But, Uncle John, wait till after breakfast, you'll want to use them
once more," said Martha Moulton, trying to help him into the chair that
Joe had placed on the white sanded floor.
Meanwhile, Joe Devins had ears for all the sounds that penetrated
the kitchen from out of doors, and he had eyes for the slices of
well-browned pork and the golden hued Johnny-cake lying before the
glowing coals on the broad hearth.
As the little woman bent to take up the breakfast, Joe, intent on doing
some kindness for her in the way of saving treasures, asked, "Shan't I
help you, Mother Moulton?"
"I reckon I am not so old that I can't lift a mite of cornbread," she
replied with chilling severity.
"Oh, I didn't mean to lift THAT THING," he made haste to explain, "but
to carry off things and hide 'em away, as everybody else has been doing
half the night. I know a first-rate place up in the woods. Used to be a
honey tree, you know, and it's just as hollow as anything. Silver
spoons and things would be just as safe in it--" but Joe's words were
interrupted by unusual tumult on the street and he ran off to learn the
news, intending to return and get the breakfast that had been offered to
him.
Presently he rushed back to the house with cheeks aflame and eyes ablaze
with excitement. "They're a coming!" he cried. "They're in sight down by
the rocks. They see 'em marching, the men on the hill, do!"
"You don't mean that its really true that the soldiers are coming here,
RIGHT INTO OUR TOWN," cried Martha Moulton, rising in haste and bringing
together with rapid flourishes to right and to left, every fragment
of silver on the table. Uncle John strove to hold fast his individual
spoon, but she twitched it without ceremony out from his rheumatic old
fingers, and ran next to the parlor cupboard, wherein lay her movable
valuables.
"What in the world shall I do with them," she cried, returning with her
apron well filled with treasures, and borne down by the weight thereof.
"Give 'em to me," cried Joe. "Here's a basket, drop 'em in, and I'll run
like a brush-fire through the town and across the old bridge, and hide
'em as safe as a weasel's nap."
Joe's fingers were creamy; his mouth was half filled with Johnny-cake,
and his pocket on the right bulged to its utmost capacity with the same,
as he held forth the basket; but the little woman was afraid to trust
him, as she had been afraid to trust her neighbors.
"No! No!" she replied, to his repeated offers. "I know what I'll do.
You, Joe Devins, stay right where you are till I come back, and, don't
you ever LOOK out of the window."
"Dear, dear me!" she cried, flushed and anxious when she was out of
sight of Uncle John and Joe. "I WISH I'd given 'em to Col. Barrett when
he was here before daylight, only, I WAS afraid I should never get sight
of them again."
She drew off one of her stockings, filled it, tied the opening at the
top with a string-plunged stocking and all into a pail full of water and
proceeded to pour the contents into the well.
Just as the dark circle had closed over the blue stockings, Joe Devin's
face peered down the depths by her side, and his voice sounded out the
words: "O Mother Moulton, the British will search the wells the VERY
first thing. Of course, they EXPECT to find things in wells!"
"Why didn't you tell me before, Joe? but now it is too late."
"I would, if I'd known what you was going to do; they'd been a sight
safer, in the honey tree."
"Yes, and what a fool I've been--flung MY WATCH into the well with the
spoons!"
"Well, well! Don't stand there, looking," as she hovered over the high
curb, with her hand on the bucket. "Everybody will know, if you do,
there."
"Martha! Martha?" shrieked Uncle John's quavering voice from the house
door.
"Bless my heart!" she exclaimed, hurrying back over the stones.
"What's the matter with your heart?" questioned Joe.
"Nothing. I was thinking of Uncle John's money," she answered.
"Has he got money?" cried Joe. "I thought he was poor, and you took care
of him because you were so good."
Not one word that Joe uttered did the little woman hear. She was already
by Uncle John's side and asking him for the key to his strong box.
Uncle John's rheumatism was terribly exasperating. "No, I won't give
it to you!" he cried, "and nobody shall have it as long as I'm above
ground."
"Then the soldiers will carry it off," she said.
"Let 'em!" was his reply, grasping his staff firmly with both hands and
gleaming defiance out of his wide, pale eyes. "YOU won't get the key,
even if they do."
At this instant, a voice at the doorway shouted the words, "Hide, hide
away somewhere, Mother Moulton, for the Red-coats are in sight this
minute!"
She heard the warning, and giving one glance at Uncle John, which look
was answered by another, "no, you won't have it," she grasped Joe Devins
by the collar of his jacket and thrust him before her up the staircase,
so quickly that the boy had no chance to speak, until she released her
hold at the entrance to Uncle John's room.
The idea of being taken prisoner in such a manner, and by a woman, too,
was too much for the lad's endurance. "Let me go!" he cried, the instant
he could recover his breath. "I won't hide away in your garret, like a
woman, I won't. I want to see the militia and the minute men fight the
troops, I do."
"Help me first, Joe. Here, quick now; let's get this box out and up
garret. We'll hide it under the corn and it'll be safe," she coaxed.
The box was under Uncle John's bed.
"What's in the old thing any how?" questioned Joe, pulling with all his
strength at it.
The box, or chest, was painted red, and was bound about by massive iron
bands.
"I've never seen the inside of it," said Mother Moulton. "It holds the
poor old soul's sole treasure, and I DO want to save it for him if I
can."
They had drawn it with much hard endeavor, as far as the garret stairs,
but their united strength failed to lift it. "Heave it, now!" cried Joe,
and lo! it was up two steps. So they turned it over and over with many a
thudding thump; every one of which thumps Uncle John heard, and believed
to be strokes upon the box itself to burst it asunder, until it was
fairly shelved on the garret floor.
In the very midst of the overturnings, a voice from below had been
heard crying out, "Let my box alone! Don't break it open. If you do,
I'll--I'll--" but, whatever the poor man MEANT to threaten as a penalty,
he could not think of anything half severe enough to say and so left it
uncertain as to the punishment that might be looked for.
"Poor old soul!" ejaculated the little woman, her soft white curls in
disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead,
as she bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter's edge.
"Now, Joe," she said, "we'll heap nubbins over it, and if the soldiers
want corn they'll take good ears and never think of touching poor
nubbins"; so they fell to work throwing corn over the red chest, until
it was completely concealed from view.
Then he sprang to the high-up-window ledge in the point of the roof and
took one glance out. "Oh, I see them, the Red-coats. True's I live,
there go the militia UP THE HILL. I thought they was going to stand and
defend. Shame on 'em, I say." Jumping down and crying back to Mother
Moulton, "I'm going to stand by the minute men," he went down, three
steps at a leap, and nearly overturned Uncle John on the stairs, who,
with many groans was trying to get to the defense of his strong box.
"What did you help her for, you scamp," he demanded of Joe, flourishing
his staff unpleasantly near the lad's head.
"'Cause she asked me to, and couldn't do it alone," returned Joe,
dodging the stick and disappearing from the scene, at the very moment
Martha Moulton encountered Uncle John.
"Your strong box is safe under nubbins in the garret, unless the house
burns down, and now that you are up here, you had better stay," she
added soothingly, as she hastened by him to reach the kitchen below.
Once there, she paused a second or two to take resolution regarding her
next act. She knew full well that there was not one second to spare,
and yet she stood looking, apparently, into the glowing embers on the
hearth. She was flushed and excited, both by the unwonted toil, and
the coming events. Cobwebs from the rafters had fallen on her hair and
home-spun dress, and would readily have betrayed her late occupation, to
any discerning soldier of the king.
A smile broke suddenly over her face, displacing for a brief second
every trace of care. "It's my only weapon, and I must use it," she
said, making a stately courtesy to an imaginary guest and straightway
disappeared within an adjoining room. With buttoned door and dropped
curtains the little woman made haste to array herself in her finest
raiment. In five minutes she reappeared in the kitchen, a picture
pleasant to look at. In all New England, there could not be a more
beautiful little old lady than Martha Moulton was that day. Her hair was
guiltless now of cobwebs, but haloed her face with fluffy little curls
of silvery whiteness, above which, like a crown, was a little cap of
dotted muslin, pure as snow. Her erect figure, not a particle of the
hard-working-day in it now, carried well the folds of a sheeny, black
silk gown, over which she had tied an apron as spotless as the cap.
As she fastened back her gown and hurried away the signs of the
breakfast she had not eaten, the clear pink tints seemed to come out
with added beauty of coloring in her cheeks; while her hair seemed
fairer and whiter than at any moment in her three-score and eleven
years.
Once more Joe Devins looked in. As he caught a glimpse of the picture
she made, he paused to cry out: "All dressed up to meet the robbers! My,
how fine you do look! I wouldn't. I'd go and hide behind the nubbins.
They'll be here in less than five minutes now," he cried, "and I'm going
over the North Bridge to see what's going on there."
"O Joe, stay, won't you?" she urged, but the lad was gone, and she
was left alone to meet the foe, comforting herself with the thought,
"They'll treat me with more respect if I LOOK respectable, and if I must
die, I'll die good-looking in my best clothes, anyhow."
She threw a few sticks of hickory-wood on the embers, and then drew
out the little round stand, on which the family Bible was always lying.
Recollecting that the British soldiers probably belonged to the Church
of England, she hurried away to fetch Uncle John's "prayer-book."
"They'll have respect to me, if they find me reading that, I know,"
she thought. Having drawn the round stand within sight of the well, and
where she could also command a view of the staircase, she sat and waited
for coming events.
Uncle John was keeping watch of the advancing troops from an upper
window. "Martha," he called, "you'd better come up. They're close by,
now." To tell the truth, Uncle John himself