A patriot lad of old Boston

Dusk had fallen over the town when Don and Jud, warmly clad in heavy coats and mufflers, made their way toward Faneuil Hall. Others were walking in the same direction—mostly officers, who stepped with the firmness and confidence that marked an officer of the King. The night was cold and dark, and few lights gleamed as they once had gleamed, cheerily, in the windows of the shops along King Street and Merchant’s Row; yet there was cheery conversation. The boys could hear laughing and congenial talking among the hurrying throngs.

“I just feel like laughing good and hard to-night,” they heard one man say.

“Yes, and I too,” another agreed. “There’s been little enough to laugh at ever since we landed in this town.”

“Well, you’ll laugh to-night, or I’m a Dutchman,” said a third. “There’s to be a farce called the Blockade of Boston. Funny! I thought I’d laugh myself sick the first time I heard it rehearsed. I tell you the officers who wrote it—let’s see; who was it now? Well, never mind; they certainly wrote a funny play. Just wait till you catch sight of General Washington!”

Jud scowled in the darkness. “Remember, Don,” he whispered, “we’ll have to keep a firm hold on our tempers.”

Don laughed. “I’ll keep a firm hold of mine, Jud; but I’m not so sure about you. You’re hot-headed, you know.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Jud. “He who laughs last, you know——”

“But say,” Don interrupted him, “you haven’t told me yet how we’re going to get inside the place.”

“That’s so,” replied Jud and thrust his elbow knowingly into his companion’s ribs. “This will get us inside, I think,” and he drew something small and shiny from his pocket and handed it to Don.

“A silver snuff-box,” said Don, looking at it with some wonder.

“Yes; it’s Sergeant-Major Bluster’s. He couldn’t seem to find it to-day. Funny, too, ’cause if he’d asked me, I could have told him right where it was all the time—in my pocket. Do you understand now?”

Don did not understand and said so emphatically.

Jud laughed good-naturedly. “You’re pretty dull sometimes,” he said frankly. “Just you let me do the talking and we’ll be inside Faneuil Hall in three shakes.”

“You’ve been doing most of the talking.” Don could not resist the thrust. “So go ahead and finish.”

“All right; now here we are.”

The boys had reached the hall, which was well lighted and partly filled with troops. Don and Jud stood to one side of the door and watched the men as they came singly and in groups and vanished inside the great building. There were ladies too, most of them young, and all escorted by gallant officers. Jud kept a sharp lookout toward the door.

At last Don, a bit impatient at the delay, asked, “How much longer are we going to wait?”

“Just a few minutes, I think. I’m waiting for fat Bluster—ah, here he comes, isn’t it?”

“You’re right,” said Don. “Look at the gait, will you?”

Bluster strode pompously to the door, nodded curtly to one of the soldiers who was on duty there and passed into the hall.

“Come on,” said Don.

“No; just a few minutes longer. Can’t you wait?”

“Say, Jud, you’re a mystery to me to-night,” said Don. “I don’t know what under the sun you’re trying to do. I don’t think you know, yourself!”

“Who’s doing all the talking now?” inquired Jud with a grin.

For almost ten minutes the boys waited in the cold. Then Jud led the way to the door. The soldier on duty at once blocked the passage. “Scat, you youngsters,” he said.

Jud surely had his temper well in hand that night. “We’re looking for a sergeant-major,” he said, smiling. “We’ve got to see him, for we have something important that belongs to him.”

“What is it?”

Jud was embarrassed—at least, he showed every sign of being embarrassed. “It’s—it’s just a little thing with a lady’s name engraved on it.”

The soldier laughed. “Do you think you could find him in there?”

“Between the two of us I think we could,” Jud replied promptly.

“Well, be quick about it then.”

The boys were as quick as a flash.

“Young Tories,” the soldier said to a bystander as they entered the building.

Jud turned abruptly, but Don grasped his arm and pulled him along. “Don’t be a hothead,” he whispered.

It was only luck that made Jud spy Bluster a few moments later in the crowded hall. The sergeant-major was sitting on a chair at the extreme right of the hall. His hat was on the floor beneath the chair, and he was leaning back with his arms folded across his chest.

More than one Redcoat looked inquiringly at the boys as they walked round the chairs and benches, and thought no doubt that they were the sons of some prominent Tory who had brought them with him. As Jud was passing behind Bluster’s chair he dropped his hat and, in picking it up, succeeded in laying the ornamental snuff-box on the hat of the soldier—a circumstance that puzzled the fellow till the end of his days.

After that the boys found a secluded corner where they stood, in the shadows, and waited for the play to begin. In front of them were Redcoats, talking and laughing and smoking. There were a great many ladies, all of whom had come to laugh at the expense of the townsfolk of Boston and of the Continental army outside the town. Fans were moving lightly to and fro, though there was no need of fans in the cold building; scabbards and buckles were clacking against the wooden seats; and the lights round the small stage jarred and flickered as couples moved in front of them to their seats.

Don and Jud said little, but their eyes and ears were alert. At last the music started, and some time later the curtain on the stage was hauled up. There were to be two plays that evening, the first of which was called “The Busy Body.” The boys watched the actors, all of whom were Redcoats, and thought the thing rather dull and stupid. But the audience seemed to enjoy it; there were frequent bursts of applause and a good deal of laughter.

“Huh,” said Jud as the curtain went down for the last time. “I guess you have to be a Redcoat or a Tory to like a thing like that.”

“Look,” whispered Don. “Bluster’s found his snuff-box.”

“Sure enough!”

It was all that the boys could do to keep from laughing as they watched the big sergeant-major. He had found his snuff-box indeed. In the uncertain light his face was ruddier than ever, and his little eyes seemed to be popping from his head as he turned first to one side, then to the other. He looked at the little box; he looked at his hat; he looked at his cuffs as if the thing might have been hidden there. Perhaps he thought he had suddenly become a magician. Then he looked at the ceiling, as if to find the person—or the bird—that had succeeded in dropping it so that it had landed on his hat beneath his chair. But even a magician or a bird could not have done that!

He was still looking at the ceiling when the lights were dimmed, and the curtain was hauled up again. “The Blockade of Boston,” which was to be played next, was a farce in which the character who represented General Washington was supposed to stride awkwardly upon the stage, wearing a long rusty sword and a wig that was many sizes too large for him; behind him walked his servant, an uncouth country boy with a rusty gun. But the audience was not to laugh at the antics of the two that night.

The curtain had been up only a few moments when the noise of firing sounded from a distance, and then a red-coated sergeant burst into the hall and exclaimed:

“The Yankees are attacking our works on Bunker’s Hill!”

Startling as the announcement was, it carried only a ripple of mild excitement; for no doubt many of the audience supposed that the sergeant’s words were part of the farce that was to be played. “A good beginning anyway,” a lieutenant who was sitting in front of the boys said to his neighbor and laughed heartily.

At that moment a general who was seated close to the stage sprang to his feet. “Look,” whispered Don. “There’s Howe himself. I didn’t notice him before.”

“Officers to your posts!” cried the general in a ringing voice.

Then there was excitement enough for anyone. To the two boys it seemed as if the whole audience rose and started for the doors at the same instant. Women were screaming and several had already fainted. Chairs and benches were being overturned—one chair overturned with Sergeant-Major Bluster in it. Scabbards were clashing and men were shouting hoarse commands.

“Let’s get out of here!” whispered Jud.

“All right; but wait till the rest have gone; we’d be killed in that mob.”

“What a glorious ending to the ‘Blockade of Boston’!” Jud exulted. “Couldn’t be better, could it?”

In the excitement some of the lights round the stage were blown out, and then the place was so dark that you could hardly distinguish faces.

And in the street it was still darker. The boys were among the last to leave the hall, and as they stepped outside they could hear the rattle of small arms and the sound of cheering away to the north.

“It’s an attack on the town,” whispered Jud excitedly. “That’s just what it is—a big attack!”

But, positive as Jud was, he was wrong, as both boys found out later. General Putnam had sent a party of perhaps two hundred Continentals under the command of Major Knowlton to destroy fourteen houses along Mill Street in Charlestown and to capture the British guards who were stationed in them. Through a mistake some of the houses were fired too soon, and the flames gave the alarm to the enemy on Bunker Hill. But the daring attempt was by no means unsuccessful. Major Knowlton succeeded in burning eight of the houses and in capturing five prisoners. Washington himself was well pleased with the venture.

But the thing that pleased Don and Jud most was the untimely ending of the night’s entertainment. No one thought of returning to the hall.

“Here comes Bluster,” said Jud, stepping into a doorway on King Street to let the Redcoat pass. “I don’t want him to see me.”

When the sergeant-major had passed, the boys made their way hurriedly to Don’s house in Pudding Lane, which they reached shortly before eleven o’clock.

“Well,” said Aunt Martha, “did you hear anything of interest at the hall?”

“Did we?” repeated Don. “You tell what happened, Jud!”

And Jud told her, not omitting the incident of the snuff-box. And when he had finished, Don thought his aunt laughed more heartily than she had laughed since the blockade began. “I’m glad you boys went,” she said. “I’m glad you could see the fine officers discomfited. They deserve it for the way some of them have acted.”

Jud was suddenly thoughtful. “What in the world will I tell fat Bluster if he ever asks me about the snuff-box?” he inquired.

“Tell him the truth, Judson,” said Aunt Martha. “But don’t tell him unless he asks you,” she added with a smile.

“I’ll tell you what to tell him,” said Don. “Tell him that the last time he used snuff he sneezed and blew the box over the Old South Meeting-House, and that when it came down it landed right on top of his hat.”

“Donald!” exclaimed his aunt. “Now you boys scat to bed—quick!”

“That’s the second time we’ve been scatted to-night,” said Jud as he followed Don up-stairs.