Who Spoke Next | Page 5

If I could only go with you!"
They sat silent for a long time, holding each other's hands, and looking at their children, till, just at sunrise, his brother John, that sleeping child's grandfather, rushed into the house, crying, "They are in sight from the hill. Come, Tom, quickly, come to the church." My master seized me in a moment, kissed his wife and children, and without speaking hastened to the place where the few men of the then very small town were assembled to resist the invaders.
Presently about eight hundred men, all armed with muskets as good as I was, and of the same fashion, were seen. These men had two cannon with them which made a fearful show to the poor colonists, as the Americans were then called.
Our men were about one hundred in number. The lordly English marched up within a few rods of us, and one called out, "Disperse, you rebels. Lay down your arms, and disperse."
Our men did not however lay down their arms. My master grasped me tighter than before. We did not stir an inch. Immediately the British officers fired their pistols, then a few of their men fired their muskets, and, at last, the whole party fired upon our little band as we were retreating. They killed eight men, and then went on to Concord, to do more mischief there.
I felt a heavy weight fall upon me; it was my master's dead body; and so I learned what muskets were made for. His fingers were on the trigger; as he fell, he pulled it, and in that sound his spirit seemed to depart.
The British marched on to Concord, and the poor brave people of Lexington, who had so gallantly made the first resistance, were left to mourn over dead companions and friends.
Soon the eldest son of my master discovered his father among the slain. The poor fellow! I never shall forget his sorrow. He groaned as if his heart would break, and then he laid himself down on the ground by the side of his father's body, and wept bitterly.
One must be made of harder stuff than I am, to forget such a thing as this. I do not ever like to speak of it, or of the painful scene that followed. The poor widow and her fatherless children! It seemed a dreadful work that I and such as I were made to perform.
But there were other things to be thought of then. The British soon returned from Concord, where they had destroyed some barrels of flour and killed two or three men.
In the mean time, the men from all the neighboring towns collected together, armed with all the muskets they could find, and annoyed them severely on their return by firing on them from behind stone walls.
My master's brother took me from the corner where I had been again placed, and joined the party. He placed himself behind a fence by which they must pass, and took such good aim with me that down fell a man every time I spoke.
Other muskets performed the same work. What they did you may judge of, when I tell you that, while two hundred and seventy-three Englishmen fell that day, only eighty-eight Americans were killed. I will not talk of what I myself performed, for I despise a boaster, but I did my share of duty, I believe.
About two months after this, uncle John, as the children called him, came again to borrow me. He was going to join the few brave men who opposed the British force at Bunker or Breed's Hill.
"Sister," he said, "you will lend me the musket, will you not? I cannot afford to buy one, and we must teach these English what stuff we are made of."
"Let me go, Mother," said the eldest boy. "I am old enough now; I am almost nineteen; let me go."
His mother said nothing; she looked at the vacant chair which was called his father's; she considered a while, and then took me and put me into her son's hands.
"God bless you, William," she said, "and bring you back safe to us; but do your duty and fear nothing."
She kissed him, and he left her. I felt William's heart beat bravely as he shouldered me. He was a fine fellow. We were as one. I was proud of him, and he of me. No man and musket did better than William and I, on that never-to-be-forgotten day; but, in the midst of the battle, a shot wounded William's right arm, and he let me fall.
His uncle led him off the field and sent him home to his mother. A countryman, who had nothing but an oak stick to fight with, seized me as I lay on the ground, and here I met with the first