Both Joe and Uncle John were compelled to remain in inaction, while below, the weary little woman acted the kind hostess to His Majesty’s troops.

But now the feast was spent, and the soldiers were summoned to begin their painful march. Assembled on the green, all was ready, when Major Pitcairn, remembering the little woman who had ministered to his wants, returned to the house to say farewell.

’Twas but a step to her door, and but a moment since he had left it, but he found her crying; crying with joy, in the very chair where he had found her at prayers in the morning.

“I would like to say good-by,” he said; “you’ve been very kind to me to-day.”

With a quick dash or two of the dotted white apron (spotless no longer) to her eye, she arose. Major Pitcairn extended his hand, but she folded her own closely together, and said:

“I wish you a pleasant journey back to Boston, sir.”

“Will you not shake hands with me before I go?”

“I can feed the enemy of my country, but shake hands with him, never!”

“And yet I put out the fire for you,” he said.

“For your mother’s sake, in old England, it was, you remember, sir.”

“I remember,” said Major Pitcairn, with a sigh, as he turned away.

“And for her sake I will shake hands with you,” said Martha Moulton.

So he turned back, and, across the threshold, in presence of the waiting troops, the commander of the expedition to Concord and the only woman in the town shook hands at parting.

Martha Moulton saw Major Pitcairn mount his horse; heard the order given for the march to begin—the march of which you all have heard. You know what a sorry time the Red Coats had of it in getting back to Boston; how they were fought at every inch of the way, and waylaid from behind every convenient tree-trunk, and shot at from tree-tops, and aimed at from upper windows, and besieged from behind stone walls, and, in short, made so miserable and harassed and overworn, that at last their depleted ranks, with the tongues of the men parched and hanging, were fain to lie down by the road-side and take what came next, even though it might be death. And then the dead they left behind them!

The men of that day are long dead. The same soil holds regulars and minute-men. England, which over-ruled, and the provinces, that put out brave hands to seize their rights, are good friends to-day, and have shaken hands over many a threshold of hearty thought and kind deed since that time.

The tree of Liberty grows yet, stately and fair, for the men of the Revolution planted it well, and surely, God himself hath given it increase. So we gather to-day, in this our story, a forget-me-not more, from the old town of Concord.

When the troops had marched away, the weary little woman laid aside her silken gown, resumed her homespun dress, and immediately began to think of getting Uncle John down-stairs again into his easy chair; but it required more aid than she could give, to lift the fallen man. At last, Joe Devins summoned returning neighbors, who came to the rescue, and the poor nubbins were left to the rats once more.

Joe climbed down the well and rescued the blue stocking, with its treasures unharmed, even to the precious watch, which watch was Martha Moulton’s chief treasure, and one of the very few in the town.

It was one hundred and one years ago in this very month of June, that nine men of the old town of Windham—which lies near the northeast corner of Connecticut—met at the meeting-house door. There was no service that day; the doors were shut, and the bell in the steeple gave no sound.

The town of Windham had appointed the nine men a committee to ask the inhabitants to give from their flocks of sheep as many as they could for the hungry men and women of Boston. Each man of the committee was told at the meeting-house door the district in which he was to gather sheep.

On his stout grey pony sat Ebenezer Devotion. As soon as he heard the eastern portion of the town assigned to him, he gave the signal to his horse, and in five minutes was out of sight over the high hill. In ten minutes he was near the famous Frog pond. As he was passing it by, a voice from the marsh along its bank cried out:

“Where now, so fast, this fine morning, Mr. Devotion?”

“The same to you, Goodwife Elderkin. I know your voice, though I can’t see your face.”

Presently a hand parted the thicket and a woman’s face appeared.

“I’m getting flag-root. It gives a twang to root beer that nothing else will, and the flag hereabout is the twangiest I know of. Stop at the house as you go along and get some beer, won’t you? Mary Ann’s to home.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Devotion, with a stiff bow. “It’s a little early for beer this morning. I’ll stop as I come this way again. How are your sheep and lambs this year?”

“First rate. Never better.”

“Have you any to part with?”

“Who wants to buy?” and Goodwife Elderkin came out from the thicket to the road-side, eager for gain.

“We don’t sell sheep in Windham this year,” said Mr. Devotion.

“Why, what’s the matter with the man?” thought Mrs. Elderkin, for Ebenezer Devotion liked to drive a good bargain as well as any one of his neighbors. Before she had time to give expression to her surprise, he said with a sharp inclination of his head toward the sun, “We’ve neighbors over yonder, good and true, who wouldn’t sell sheep if we were shut in by ships of war, and hungry, too.”

“What! any news from Boston town?”

“It’s twenty-four days, to-day, since the port was shut up.”

“’Pears as if king and Parliament really believed that tea was cast away by the men of Boston, now don’t it? ’stead of every man, woman and child in the country havin’ a hand in it,” said Mrs. Elderkin.

“About the sheep!” replied Mr. Devotion, jerking up his horse’s head from the sweet, pure grass, greening all the road-side.

“Let your pony feed while he can,” she replied. “What about the sheep?”

“How many will you give?”

“How many are you going to give yourself?”

“Twice as many as you will.”

“Do you mean it?”

“I do.”

“Then I’ll give every sheep I own.”

“And how many is that?”

“A couple of dozen or so.”

“Better keep some of them for another time.”

Mrs. Elderkin laughed again. “I’ll say half a dozen then, if a dozen is all you want to give yourself.”

Ebenezer Devotion drew from his wallet a slip of paper and headed his list of names with “Six sheep, from Goodwife Elderkin.”

“Thank you in the name of God Almighty and the country,” he said, solemnly, as he jerked his pony’s head from the grass and rode on.

When every neighbor feels it a duty to carry intelligence from the last speaker he has met to the next hearer he may meet, news flies fast, so Goodwife Elderkin was prepared for the accost of Mr. Devotion. She did not linger long in the swamp, but, washing her hands free from mud in the water of the pond, walked swiftly home. By the time she reached her house, the gray pony and his rider were two miles away on the road to Canterbury. The cry of hunger and possible starvation in the town of Boston was spreading from village to village and from house to house.

The work went on for four days, and at the end of that time 257 sheep had been freely given. The owners drove them, on the evening of the 27th day of the month, to the appointed place, and, very early in the morning of the 28th, many of the inhabitants were come together to see the flock start on its long march. Two men and two boys went with the gift. Good wife Elderkin was early on the highway. She wanted to make certain just how many sheep bore the mark of Ebenezer Devotion’s ownership; but the driven sheep went past too quickly for her, and she never had the satisfaction of finding out how many he gave. Following the flock up the hill, she saw in the distance a sight that made her heart beat fast. On the stone wall, under a great tree, sat Mary Robbins, a little girl. She was dressed in a pink calico frock, and she was holding in her arms a snow-white lamb, around whose neck she had tied a strip of the calico of which her own gown was fashioned.

“Mary Robbins!” she cried, breathless from her haste. “What have you got that lamb for?”

Mary blushed under her little sun-bonnet, hugged the lamb, and said not a word. At the moment up came the flock, panting and warm. Down sprang Mary Robbins from the wall, the lamb in her arms. Johnny Manning, aged fifteen years, was one of the two lads in care of the sheep. To him Mary ran, saying:

“Johnny, Johnny, won’t you take my lamb, too?”

“What for?”

“Why, for some poor little girl in the town where there isn’t anything to eat,” urged Mary, her sun-bonnet falling unheeded into the dust, as she held up her offering to the cause of liberty.

“Why, it can’t walk to Boston,” said the boy, running back to recover a stray sheep.

“You can carry it in your arms,” she urged.

“Give it to me, then.”

She gave it, saying:

“Be good to it, Johnny, and give him some milk to drink to-night. It don’t eat much grass, yet.”

And so Johnny Manning marched away, over and down and out of sight, with Mary’s lamb in his arms. As for Mary herself, little woman that she was, having made her sacrifice, she would have dropped on the grass, after picking up her sun-bonnet, and had a good cry over her loss, had it not been for Goodwife Elderkin standing there in the road, waiting for her.

With a sharp look at the child, the woman left the highway to go to her own house, and Mary went home, hoping that no one would ask her about the lamb.

The flock of sheep marched until the noontide, when a halt was ordered. After that they went onward over hill and river, with rest at night and at noon, until the town of Roxbury was reached. At this place the sheep were left to be taken to Boston, when opportunity could be had.

With Mary’s lamb in his arms, Johnny Manning accompanied the messenger who went up Boston Neck to carry a letter to the “Selectmen of the Town.” That letter has been preserved and is carefully kept among the treasured documents of the Massachusetts Historical Society. It is too long to be given here, but, after begging Boston to suffer and be strong, remembering what had been done for the country by its founders, it closes in these words: “We know you suffer, and feel for you. As a testimony of our commiseration of your misfortunes, we have procured a small flock of sheep, which at this season are not so good as we could wish, but are the best we had. This small present, gentlemen, we beg you would accept and apply to the relief of those honest, industrious poor, who are most oppressed by the late oppressive acts.”

Then, after a promise of future help in case of need, the letter is signed by Samuel Grey, Ebenezer Devotion, and seven other names, ending with that of Hezekiah Manning.

A British officer, seeing the lamb in Johnny’s arms, offered to buy it, bribing him with a bit of gold; but Johnny said “there wasn’t any gold in the land that he would exchange it for,” and so the lamb reached Boston in safety before the sheep got there. As Johnny walked along the streets he was busy looking out for some poor little girl to give it to, according to Mary’s request.

“I must wait,” he thought, “until I find some one who is almost starved.”

On the Common side he met a little girl who cried “Oh! see! see! A lamb! A live lamb in Boston Town!”

The child’s eyes rested on the little white creature, which accosted her with a plaintive bleat. Johnny Manning’s eyes were riveted on the little girl. What he thought, he never said. “Do you want it?” he asked.

“O yes! yes! Where did you get it?”

“I’ve brought it from Roxbury in my arms. Mary Robbins gave it, in Windham, for some poor little girl who was hungry in Boston. Are you hungry?”

“No,” said the child, hesitatingly.

“Are you poor?”

“My father is”—a sudden thought stopped the words she was about to speak. “Give me the lamb,” she said, “and I’ll feed three hungry little girls every day as long as Boston is shut up. I will! I will! and Mary’s lamb shall live until I’m a hungry little girl myself, and I will keep it until I am starved clear almost to death.”

Johnny put Mary’s little lamb on the walk. “See if it will follow you,” he said.

“Come lamb! lamb! come with Catharine,” and it went bleating after her along the Common side.

“It’s used to a girl,” ejaculated the boy, “and it hasn’t been a bit happy with me. Give it grass and milk,” he called after Catharine, who turned and bowed her head.

“A pretty story I shall have to tell Mary Robbins,” thought Johnny. “Here I have given her lamb to be kept and coddled, and it’s likely never eaten at all—but I know that little girl will keep her word. She looks it—and she said she would feed three little girls as long as Boston is shut up, and that is more than the lamb could do. I must recollect the very words, to tell Mary.”

When the Boston Gazette of July 4th, 1774, reached the village of Windham, its inhabitants were surprised at the following announcement, more particularly as not one of them knew where the last sheep came from:

“Last week, were driven to the neighboring town of Roxbury two hundred and fifty-eight sheep, a generous contribution of our sympathizing brethren of the town of Windham, in the colony of Connecticut; to be distributed for the employment or relief of those who may be sufferers by means of the act of Parliament, called the Boston Port Bill.”

Johnny Manning, when he returned to Windham, privately explained the matter to Mary Robbins, by telling her that when the sheep were numbered at Roxbury he counted in her lamb.

It was Commander-in-chief Washington’s birthday, and it was Jeremy Jagger’s birthday.

General Washington was forty-four years old that birthday, a hundred years ago. Jeremy Jagger was fourteen, and early in the morning of the 22d of February, 1776, the General and the lad were looking upon the same bit of country, but from different positions. General George Washington was reviewing his precious little army for the thousandth time; the lad Jeremy was looking from a hill upon the camp at Cambridge, and from thence across the River Charles over into Boston, which city had, for many months, been held by the British soldiers.

At last Jeremy exclaimed: “I say, it’s too chestnut-bur bad; it is.”

“Did you step on one?” questioned a tall, hard-handed, earnest-faced man, who at the instant had come up to the stone-wall on which Jeremy stood, surveying the camp and its surroundings.

“Come along, Jeremy,” called his companion, who had strode across the wall and gone on, regardless of the boy’s words.

When Jeremy had ended his expressed wishes, he gathered up his hatchet, dinner-basket, and coil of stout cord, and plunged through the snow after his leader.

When he had overtaken him, the impulsive lad’s heart burst out at the lips with the words: “We could take Boston now, just as easy as anything—without wasting a jot of powder either. Skip across the ice, don’t you see, and be right in there before daylight. A big army lying still for months and months, and just doing nothing but wait for folks in Boston to starve out! I say it’s shameful; now, too, when the ice has come that General Washington has been waiting all winter for.”

“You won’t help your country one bit by scolding about it, Jeremy. You’d better save your strength for cutting willow-rods to-day.”

“I’d cut like a hurricane if the rods were only going to whip the enemy with. But just for sixpence a day—pshaw! I say, it don’t pay.”

“Look here, lad, can you keep a secret?”

“Then why on earth are you talking to me in that manner, boy?” questioned the man.

“Why you know all about it, just as well as I do; and a fellow must speak out in the woods or somewhere. Why, I get so mad and hot sometimes that it seems as if every thought in me would burn right out on my face, when I think about my poor mother over there,” pointing backward to the three-hilled city.

The two were standing at the moment midway of a corn-field. The February wind was lifting and rustling and shaking rudely the withered corn-stalks, with their dried leaves. To the northward lay the Cambridge camp, across the Charles River. To the south and east, just over Muddy River and Stony Brook, lay the right wing of the American Army, with here a fort and there a redoubt stretching at intervals all the distance between the camp at Cambridge and Dorchester Neck, on the southeast side of Boston. Behind them, to the westward, lay Cedar Swamp, while not more than half a mile to the front there was a four-gun battery and Brookline Fort, on the Charles, near by.

“I’ll try as hard as I can,” promised Jeremy.

“No one can have tried his best without accomplishing something that it was grand to do, though not always just what he was trying to do,” responded the man, glancing kindly down upon the fresh, eager lad, tramping through the snow, at his side. “Don’t forget. ‘Silence is golden,’ in war always. Not a word, mind, when you get home, about the work of to-day.”

They were come now to a spot where the marsh seemed to be filled with sounds of wood-cutting. As they plunged into Cedar Swamp, the sounds grew nearer and multiplied. It was like the rapid firing of muskets.

Running through the swamp there was a trout-brook, that bore along its borders a dense growth of water-willows.

And now they advanced within sight of at least two hundred men and boys, every one of whom worked away as though his life depended on cutting a certain amount of willow-boughs in a given time.

“What does it all mean?” questioned Jeremy.

“But, pray tell me,” persisted Jeremy, “what under the sun the things are for, anyway. They’re good for nothing for fire-wood, green.”

Mr. Wooster turned and looked at the lad and said: “A good soldier asks no questions and marches, without knowing whither. He also cuts, without knowing for what. Now, to work!” and, at the instant they mingled with the workmen.

In less than a minute Jeremy’s dinner-basket was swinging on a willow-bough, his coat was hanging protectingly over it (you must remember that it contained Jeremy Jagger’s birthday cake), and the lad’s own arms were working away to the musical sounds of a hatchet beating on a vast amount of “whistle-stuff,” until mid-day and hunger arrived in company.

At the signal for noon Jeremy Jagger began his birthday feast. He perched himself on a stout willow-branch, hanging the basket on a conveniently growing peg at his right hand, and, by frequent examination of the store within, was able to solace two or three lads, less fortunate than himself, who were taking the mid-day rest, refreshed by plain bread and cheese, seated on a branch, lower down on the same tree.

“We live in Brookline,” answered the elder.

“Well, do you know what under the sun we are cutting such bundles of fagots for to-day?” he slyly questioned, being beyond the hearing of the ears of his friend, and so safe from censure.

“I asked father this morning,” spoke up the younger lad (of not more than nine years), “and he told me he guessed General Washington was going to take Boston on the ice, and every soldier was going to take a bundle of fagots along, so as to keep from sinking if the ice broke through.”

This bit of military news was received with shouts of laughter, that echoed from tree to tree along the brook, and then the noon-day rest was over. The wind began to blow in cooler and faster from the sea, and busy hands were obliged to work fast to keep from stiffening under the power of the growing frost.

When the new moon hung low in the west and the sun was gone, the brookside, the cart-path, even the swamp fell back into its accustomed silence, for the workers, in groups of eight or ten, had from minute to minute gone homeward, leaving huge piles of fagots near the log bridge.

At midnight his companion of the morning came and stood under his chamber window, and tapped lightly with a bean-pole against the glass to awaken him.

Jeremy heard the sound, but in his dream thought it was a gun fired from one of the ships in the harbor at his mother, and himself, and Boston.

“Jeremy, get up!” said somebody, touching his shoulder.

“Come, mother!” ejaculated Jeremy, clutching at the air and uttering the words under tremendous pressure.

“Come yourself, lad,” said somebody, shaking him a little roughly; whereupon Jeremy awoke. “Get up, Jeremy Jagger. Hitch the oxen to the cart. Put on the hay-rigging. Stay, I must help you to do that; but hurry.”

Jeremy rubbed his eyes, wondered what had become of his mother, and how Mr. Wooster found his way into the house in the night, and lastly, what was to be done. Furthermore, he dressed with speed, and awakened the oxen by vigorous touches and moving words.

Mr. Wooster helped to adjust the hay-rigging, and then the large-wheeled cart rolled grindingly over the frozen ground of the highway, until it turned into the path leading into the swamp, over which the snow lay in unbroken surface. Jeremy Jagger’s was but the pioneer cart that night. A half-dozen rolled and tumbled and reeled over the uneven surface behind him, to the log bridge. It was cold and still. As the topmost fagot was tossed on the pile in his cart he drew off a mitten, thrust his benumbed fingers between his parted lips, and when he removed them said: “I hope General Washington has had a better birthday than mine.”

“I know one thing, my lad.”

Jeremy turned quickly, for he did not recognize the voice. Even then he could not discern the face; but he knew instantly that it was no common person who had spoken. Nevertheless, with that sturdy, good-as-anybody air that made the men of April 19th and June 17th fight so gloriously, he demanded:

“What do you know?”

“That General Washington would gladly change places with you to-night, if you are the honest lad you seem to be.”

Through the next two hours they toiled on, Jeremy on foot, and often ready to lie down with the healthy sleep that would not leave its hold on his weary brain.

It was day-dawn when the fagots had been duly delivered at the appointed place and Jeremy reached home.

He had been cautiously bidden to see that the cart was not left outside with its tell-tale rigging. He obeyed the injunction, shut the oxen in, gave them double allowance of hay, and was startled by Aunt Hannah’s cheery call of: “Jerry, my boy, come to breakfast.”

“Breakfast ready?” said Jeremy.

“Why, yes. I was up early this morning, and thought of you.” And that was the only allusion Aunt Hannah made to his night’s work. He longed to tell her and chat about it all at the table; but, remembering his promise in the swamp, he said not a word.

Six nights out of seven Jeremy and his oxen worked all night and slept nearly all day.

The brook in Cedar Swamp was robbed of its willows, and many another bit of land and watercourse suffered in a like manner.

Then came the order to make the fagots into fascines. Two thousand soldiers were got to work to effect this. Jeremy Jagger began to understand what was going on behind the lines at Roxbury. He was the happiest lad in existence during the ensuing days. He forgot to eat, even, when the fascines were in making. Perceiving the manner in which they were formed he volunteered to help, and soon found he could drive the cross supports into the ground, lay the saplings upon them, and even aid in twisting the green withes about them, as well as any soldier of them all.

Bales of “screwed” hay began to appear in great numbers within the lines, and empty barrels by the hundreds sprang up from somewhere.

And all this time, guess as every man might and did—the coming event was known only to the commander-in-chief and to the six generals forming the council of war.

Monday night, before sundown, Jeremy Jagger received an order. It was:

March 4th.

Jeremy Jagger:

With oxen and cart (hay-rigging on), be at the Roxbury lines by moon-rise to-night. Take a pocketful of gingerbread along.

Wooster.

Undaunted and excited by the mere possibility of being hit, Jeremy went onward. When he arrived in Roxbury he found everybody and everything astir. His cart was seized, filled with bundles of “screwed” hay, and, ere he knew it, he was in line with two hundred and ninety-nine other carts, marching forward to fortify Dorchester Heights. Before him went twelve hundred troops, under the command of General Thomas; before the troops trundled an unknown number of carts, filled with intrenching tools; before the tools were eight hundred men. Not a word was spoken. In silence and with utmost care they trod the way. At eight of the clock the covering party of eight hundred reached the Height and divided—one-half going toward the point nearest Boston, the other to the point nearest Castle William, on Castle Island, held by the British.

Poor Jeremy was not allowed to go farther than Dorchester Neck with his first load. The bundles of hay were tumbled out and laid in line, to protect the supplying party, in case the work going on on the hill beyond should be found out.

The next time, to his extreme delight, he found that fascines were to go in his cart. When he reached Dorchester Height quick work was made of unloading his freight, and, without a word spoken, he was ordered back with a move of the hand.

Four times the lad and the oxen went up Dorchester Hill that night. The fourth time, as no order was given to return, Jeremy thought he might as well stay and see the battle that would begin with the dawn.

He left the oxen behind an embankment with a big bundle of hay to the front of them; and after five minutes devoted to gingerbread he went to work. Morning would come long before they were ready to have it unveil the growing forts to the eyes of Admiral Shuldham, with his ships of war lying in the harbor; or to the sentinels at Castle William, on Castle Island, to the right of them; or to General Howe, with his vigilant thousands of Englishmen safe and snug in Boston, to the north of them.

Jeremy was rolling barrels to the brow of the hill they were fortifying, and tumbling into them with haste shovelful after shovelful of good solid earth, that they might hit hard when rolled down on the foe that should dare to mount the height, when a cautious voice at his side uttered the one word “Look!” accompanied with a motion of the hand toward Dorchester Neck.

In the moonlight, past the bales of hay, two thousand Americans were filing in silent haste to the relief of the men who had toiled all night to build forts they meant to defend on the morrow.

It was four o’clock in the morning when they came. Jeremy was tired and sleepy too. His eyelids would drop over his eyes, shutting out everything he so longed to keep in sight.

“You’ve worked like a hero,” said a kind voice to the lad. “It will be hot work here by sunrise—no place for boys, when the battle begins.”

“I can fight,” stoutly persisted Jeremy, nodding as he spoke; and, had anybody thought of the lad at all after that, he might have been found in the ox-cart, carelessly strewn over with hay, taking a nap.

Meanwhile on came the morning. A friendly fog hung lovingly around the new hills on the old hills, that the Yankees had built in a night.

General Howe marched out to take a look through the fog at the old familiar hills he had known so long, and didn’t like the looks of the new hats they wore. He wondered how in the world the thing had been done without discovery; but there it was, larger a good deal than life, seen through the fog, and he knew also why it was that the cannon had been playing on Boston through the hours of three or four nights. He was angry, astonished, perplexed. He had a little talk with Admiral Shuldham; and they agreed to do something. Yes, they would walk up and demand back the hills looking over into Boston. Transports came hurrying to pier and wharf, and soldiers went bravely down and gave themselves to the work of a short sea voyage.

Meanwhile Jeremy Jagger’s nap was broken by a number of trenching tools thrown carelessly over his back, as he lay asleep in his cart.

“Halloo there!” he shouted, striving to rise from the not very comfortable blanket that dropped in twain to the left and the right, as he shook off the tools and returned from the land of sleep to Dorchester Heights and the 5th of March. He was just in time to hear a voice like a clarion cry out: “Remember it is the 5th of March, and avenge the death of your brethren.”

Meanwhile a new and unexpected force arrived on the field of action. It came in from sea—a great and mighty wind, that tossed and tumbled the transports to and fro on the waves and would not let them land anywhere save at the place they came from. So they went peacefully back to Boston, and the Liberty Men over on the hills went on all day and all night, in the rain and the wind, building up, strengthening, fortifying, in fact getting ready, as Jeremy told his aunt, when he reached home on the morning of the sixth of March, “for a visit from King George and all his army.”

The next day General Howe doubted and did little. The next and the next went on and then on the morning of the 17th of March something new had happened. There was one little hill, so near to Boston that it was almost in it; and lo! in the night it had been visited by the Americans, and a Liberty Cap perched above its head.

General Howe said: “We must get away from here in haste.”

“Take us with you,” said a thousand Royalists of the town; and he took them, bag and baggage, to wander up and down the earth.

Over on Cambridge Common marched, impatient as ever, General Putnam, with his four thousand followers, ready to cross the River Charles and walk once more the city streets of the good old town. On all the hills were gathered men, women and children to see the British troops depart.

Jeremy Jagger was up before the dawn on that sweetest of Sunday mornings in March, and he reached the Roxbury lines just as General Ward was ready to put his arms about Boston’s Neck. The lad took his place with the five hundred men and walked by Ensign Richards’ side, as he proudly bore the standard up to the gates, which Ebenezer Learned “unbarred and opened.” Once within the lines, Jeremy, unmindful of the crow’s feet strewn over the way, made haste through lane and street to his old home on Beacon Hill. “Could that be his mother looking out at him through the window-pane?” he thought, as he drew near.

She saw him. She knew him. But what could it mean that she did not open the door to let him in; that she waved him away? It could not be that she, his own mother, had turned Tory, that her face was grown so red and angry at the sight of her son.

Jeremy banged away at the door. There was no answer.

At last he heard the lifting of a sash, a head, muffled carefully, appeared from the highest window in the house, and a voice (the lad knew whose it was) said: “Go, Jeremy! Go away out of Boston as fast as you can. I’ll come to you as soon as it is safe.”

“Why, mother, what’s the matter?” cried the boy.

“Small pox! I’ve had it. Everybody has it. Go!”

“Good-by,” cried Jeremy, running out of Boston as fast as any British soldier of them all and a good deal more frightened. He burst into Aunt Hannah’s house with the news that he had been to Boston, that the soldiers were all gone, that he had seen his mother, that she had the small-pox and sent him off in a hurry.

“Tut! tut!” she cried. “It’s wicked to tell lies, Jeremy Jagger.”

“I’m not telling lies. Every word is true. Please give me something to eat.”

But Aunt Hannah did not wait to give the lad food, nor even to speak the prayer of thanksgiving that went like incense from her heart. She went into the barn-yard and threw corn on the barn-floor, to which the hens and turkeys made haste. Closing the door, she summoned Jeremy to kill the largest and best of them.

The big clothes-basket was full of lint for wounds that now never should be made. Gladly she tossed out the fluffy mass, and packed within it every dainty the house contained.

It was nearly sunset when Aunt Hannah and Jeremy started forth, with the basket between them, to Mr. Wooster’s house, hoping that he would carry it in his wagon up to Boston. He was not at home.

“Get out the cart,” said Aunt Hannah to Jeremy, when they learned no help was to be obtained. She sat by the roadside watching the basket until the cart arrived.

“I’m going with you,” she said, after the basket was in; she climbed to the seat beside the lad, and off they started for Boston.

It was dark when they reached the lines, and no passes granted, the officers said, to go in that night.

“But I’ve food for the hungry,” said Aunt Hannah, in her sweetest voice, from the darkness of the cart, “and folks are hungry in the night as well as in the day.”

She deftly threw aside the cover from the basket and took out a chicken, which she held forth to the man, saying: “Take it. It’s good.”